Ted Rall’s cartoon concerns the countless questions about former President Joe Biden’s mental capacity during his 2020 campaign and presidency. Echoing Senator Howard Baker’s Watergate query about what Nixon knew and when, Americans are now asking what Biden’s inner circle knew about his cognitive state and when. Recent reports, including a book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, reveal that aides discussed putting Biden in a wheelchair due to his physical deterioration. Another story highlights Biden’s struggles in his 2023 special counsel interview, which featured numerous verbal stumbles and memory lapses. Biden is a figure more pathetic than Nixons.
As Scandals Go, Bidengate Is Low on the Drama Meter

Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Yeah, I’ll take an addled Biden who could not work the bully pulpit but who was buttressed with a very competent staff over the current sierra show.
You obviously didn’t read “Original Sin.” These clowns were anything but competent.
You read it? Did they name any sources that indicated that Biden wasn’t making decisions? All I’ve heard is unattributed and thus a bit suspicious.
I read it, yes. The book draws from 200+ interviews with Dem insiders and others, including three Cabinet members under Biden. Everything is sourced. ALL of them say Biden was making few if any decisions throughout his four years and, for that matter, before 2020. He did not perform his job as president. All he did was (try to) read what he was ordered to read.
It’s a bleak, extreme, insane read–even worse than I thought.
Ted, are you using AI to write the actual text now? Bidengate low on drama? I hope you aren’t driving a car or operating heavy machinery.
Let’s be clear. This was a coup. People who were NOT elected to be president took over the job. They did it in secret and actively kept others from finding out. The media — and we have only column A or column B to choose from — either (A) knew and helped keep it quiet or (B) didn’t know because they were too clueless to suss out the truth.
At least with Nixon, the media was after him, digging up the dirt. At least with Nixon, people went to prison (granted, for the most part for very small amounts of time). This is much more serious than Watergate.
Proof of assertion? Wait for the midterms. Wait for the 2028 elections. How many people are going to running for president on the democratic ticket? And how many of them were involved with the Biden administration? They will be asked, over and over and over, what THEY knew and when they knew it, and also what they DIDN’T know and how they could possibly run the country when they missed those details.
I certainly have no great love for Trump (nor for Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Cheney, Obama, or Biden — the most-recent batch of presidents), but he’s turning out to be right: Washington IS a swamp. The corruption is no longer compartmentalized. It’s everywhere.
I wish your comments allowed upvotes. I’d give your response several.
I think it’s “low on the drama meter” because nobody wants to draw attention to ow much it reveals what Al Gore told a mutual friend back in 1992 when he became VP: “We don’t really get to do much. We’re figureheads. We just follow orders.” Indeed, I suspect one of the reasons why there is such hostility to Trump is that he refuses to follow the bipartisan scriptwriters’ version and is running his own show–not that it’s an improvement.