JOE BIDEN claims to be running for the Presidency of the United States for a second term next year.
His Vice President, Kamala Harris, seems to be stuck along for the ride.
But the closer it comes to the Democratic Party having to confirm their candidates, the less likely it looks like 80-year-old Biden will be running.
One reason is because of a scandal which has hardly registered outside a portion of the American press.
It has certainly received less coverage than the many troubles surrounding former President Donald Trump.
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The scandal surrounds Biden’s son Hunter and how one of his old laptops was discovered containing thousands of images, including some of him taking drugs and having sex with prostitutes.
It also contained data showing his father’s links to Hunter’s business dealings, such as with countries like China and Ukraine.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing about it, because when the Hunter Biden scandal broke almost three years ago it was suppressed.
Literally suppressed.
When the New York Post broke what is now known as the “Hunter Biden laptop controversy” (it even has its own Wikipedia page) ahead of the 2020 Presidential election, major tech companies including Twitter and Facebook killed the story.
In fact they even suspended the accounts of America’s oldest paper.
More than 50 former intelligence agents were brought together by the Biden team to dismiss the revelations as “classic Russian disinformation”.
In fact it was them who were spreading lies.
As other papers and media have come to admit, the contents of Hunter’s laptop were true.
And it wasn’t just the lifestyle of drug-taking and prostitution that he was engaged in that was the scandal.
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That was nothing alongside the big story.
The big story was the fact the laptop showed Hunter, 53, and other Biden family members were involved in an influence-peddling scheme.
What the Americans call “pay to play”.
Hunter and other family members collected millions and millions of dollars from foreign entities for access to “the big guy” — when Biden was Barack Obama’s Vice-President.
Family corruption
It is a huge scandal, one that Democrats and others on the Left have desperately tried to ignore.
Yet as the months go on it is becoming harder.
Left-wing media are finally having to admit that it isn’t good.
Republican politicians are closing in with their committee of investigation.
And senior Democrats are finally having to dodge questions about corruption in the first family.
If Joe Biden doesn’t run for the Presidency, the most likely reason will be that his fellow Democrats have said to him that they can no longer defend him and can no longer excuse the story of his family corruption.
The fact that Hunter last month pleeaded guilty and cut a deal on some minor charges relating to tax evasion and gun ownership will have no bearing on this.
The big scandal is yet to come.
And yet there are other reasons why the Democrats should be getting nervous about their lead candidate.
Biden would be 86 years old at the end of his second term.
And as he comes to the end of his first term it is already clear that he is not well.
The President has been famous throughout his career for his long-windedness.
Joe Biden speeches have always been so boring that birds would fall out of the sky.
But he made a kind of sense.
It is increasingly clear that he no longer does.
He has a physical frailty which is painfully obvious.
When he tripped and fell on stage last month it was sad more than laughable.
Nobody wants to see a man in his eighties falling over.
But it was just the latest time that the President didn’t seem to know where he was or where he should be going.
In recent years he has repeatedly wandered around aimlessly on stage.
He has gone for handshakes with people who are not there, mixed up family members and otherwise seemed simply to be lost.
And then there are the speeches.
At his peak, Biden was rambling but vaguely followable.
Today his “Biden-isms” are coming not just every month but every day.
He recently finished a speech by saying “God save the Queen”.
Why? Nobody knows.
His bafflingly overpromoted press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre could not explain it and simply pretended to be exasperated when asked.
But what could anyone say?
Was he joking about the late Queen?
Does he think she’s still alive?
Has he forgotten that America is a Republic that broke away from this country three centuries ago?
Whichever way you look, it makes no sense.
This week he managed to mix up Ukraine and Iraq, telling waiting media (in a rare appearance) that Vladimir Putin was losing his war in Iraq.
Why did he say Iraq?
Again, nobody around him can explain because no explanation could be come up with.
Except that the President is becoming forgetful.
Which none of his supporters want to say.
Stumbling around
Later in the week he finished up a very rare live TV interview by walking off set at the end of this segment.
Instead of waiting for the cameras to stop rolling he simply got up and once again looked uncertain about where he was heading and whether there might be a trip hazard en route.
“Don’t go away” said the presenter.
Too late.
He was already stumbling around behind her.
And then there was the discovery — teased out of the White House this week — that the President suffers from sleep apnoea.
The White House confirmed this earlier this week, saying that the President wears a CPAP machine when he is sleeping.
Considering that the White House always insists the President’s health is absolutely tip-top, top of the world, couldn’t be better, this was an unusual admission.
Why did it come? Only because the media noticed a strange mark on the side of the President’s face when he briefly appeared the other day.
Some worked out what it must be and only then was the White House bounced into having to admit this medical problem of the President’s.
But this, I guarantee, is just the start.
The Democrats are aware that they are running a candidate who is only ever one literal or verbal stumble away absolute disaster.
And if Biden is out then Kamala Harris is President.
And she has approval ratings that make coronavirus look popular.
So they are in a mess.
Get Biden and Harris out of the race and it’ll be messy.
Stick with them and the mess will only just have begun.
