This conspiracy theory is completely out of control
A little over a year ago, Donald Trump claimed at a campaign rally that if Joe Biden were to get elected, “super-left radical crazies” would run the country after they “put him into a home.” We knew then that such alarmist predictions were desperate malarkey, but now that President Biden has been in office for a couple of months, Trump has been proven wrong on both counts.
The Biden administration has done more to solve problems and put America first than we have seen in years. Passing sweeping legislation such as the American Rescue Plan (ARP), for example, requires empathy, discipline, and perseverance. With an approval rating as high as 75 percent, the ARP is hardly a product of “super-left radical crazies.”
As for Trump’s other insistence, Biden was indeed put into a home—it’s called the Executive Residence, and a record 81-plus million voters put him there. The idea that Biden’s mental health was deteriorating so that, if elected, he would have to resign or be propped up while others ran things was a scare tactic that failed miserably.
In September, ABC News exposed that even while the Trump campaign was trying to cast Biden as what Kim Jong-Un might call a “dotard,” the Trump administration was colluding with Russia on this losing strategy. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security curiously withheld a July intelligence bulletin that revealed with “high confidence” that “Russian malign influence actors” were aiming to denigrate Biden’s candidacy through allegations of poor mental and physical health.
Now that Biden is in office, he has been tending to the business and welfare of America while proving these conspiracy theorists wrong. While this ugly line of attack no longer endangers Biden’s candidacy, incredulous people are rushing to make ridiculous allegations in response to witnessing Biden act with all the signs of top mental fitness.
A perfect example is the claim on social media this week that Biden’s exchange with reporters at the White House on Tuesday was a staged event in front of a green screen. While multiple fact-checking agencies have debunked the claim that the video was suspicious, this new conspiracy theory was doomed to fail because it would mean all the reporters somehow weren’t on the South Lawn with Biden.
Predictably, those reporters have come out on the side of truth and reason. Steve Herman, Voice of America’s White House correspondent, tweeted that he “was the one holding the lighter-colored fuzzy microphone and thus literally in front of @POTUS on the South Lawn. It’s all real.” The reality of the exchange has been further corroborated by news photographs and simultaneous video footage from other angles.
The fact that Biden’s presidency hasn’t imploded in a sea of mental confusion is hard for some conspiracy theorists to believe. As Biden maintains laser-sharp focus on cleaning up Trump’s messes and bringing health and prosperity to the country, his actions each day reveal the extraordinary extent to which the Trump-Russia “Sleepy Joe” slur was not only highly offensive but flatly absurd.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month