The Brew: 2024’s Tale of Two Presidents
Happy Monday!
As we set ourselves to say goodbye to the weird and wild 2024, let’s look back on some of the moments that made this year one for the history books. Today, the Tale of Two Presidents.
From the Courthouse to the White House
Three hundred years from now, the tale of Donald Trump’s 2024 will be considered folklore — an American myth right up there with George Washington’s cherry tree and Paul Bunyan adventures with Babe. Trump spent the first part of the year with his tush planted in cold and hostile New York courtrooms. The Democrats had finally seen their fantasy of a Donald Trump mug shot become reality.
Except the mug shot became a sensation. A bestseller. A rallying cry. And the harder the Democrats pushed their lawfare war against Trump, the higher his polling numbers went. The American people, in their wisdom, saw the cases for what they were: an effort by the regime in power to bring down its greatest political foe. A nation suffering under the policies of that regime, feeling abused and ignored, understood what Trump was saying to be true: “They’re not after me. They’re after you, and I’m just in their way.” (As the year has gone by, the lawfare efforts have been falling apart with increasing speed.)
Then came the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, the first of two assassination attempts. Shot in the ear, miraculously escaping death, Trump fought his way to his feet, pumping his fist and yelling “Fight, fight, fight!”
And complained about losing his shoes. It was one of those iconic American moments. Think about John F. Kennedy at the Berlin Wall. Washington crossing the Delaware. The “Miracle on Ice.”
Trump went on to roll up a series of campaign stories that rival the imagination of Washington biographer Parson Weems. He worked a shift at a McDonald’s. After rival Joe Biden called his supporters “garbage,” Trump hopped on board a garbage truck. At the end of his rallies, he danced.
Then, surrounded by a crew of independent thinkers, outcasts, and establishment targets, Trump sailed to an overwhelming election victory, winning both the Electoral College vote and the popular vote. He gained endearing support across all demographics, with an approval rating higher than he’s ever seen, with foreign leaders and even Big Tech moguls making a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. From football players to social media influencers, everyone was doing the “Trump Dance.”
The felon had become a folk hero.
Today, Donald Trump is less than three weeks away from being again inaugurated once again as president of the United States. Had you not lived through it and seen it with your own eyes, would you believe it?
From Democratic Nominee to Bitter, Mentally Challenged Ghost Exposed as a Fraud
Then there’s Joe Biden. The president started the year crowned, without challenge, as the incumbent Democratic presidential nominee. His lawfare effort against rival Donald Trump was in full swing. The Democratic fraud machine was oiled and being revved up.
Oh, sure. His every public appearance contained gaffes, embarrassing laughs, and scary mental lapses. “Nothing to see here,” the White House insisted. They deemed viral videos of those lapses “Republican deep fakes.”
Until June 27. That’s when JoeBiden took the stage at CNN to debate Donald Trump, and within seconds of opening his mouth, Democratic chances of winning were crushed like pretzels under a steamroller. The con, the cover-up, was exposed. Biden was so clearly mentally incapacitated that even the fierce fighter Trump backed away.
Through July, pressure grew on Biden to withdraw from the race. But he resisted — until old friend Nancy Pelosi was dispatched to carry out the hit. “Give up the race,” she reportedly told him, “or we’ll use the 25th Amendment and toss you out of office.” Biden gave in.
However, the Big Guy would have his revenge. As he once said, “Nobody ****s with a Biden.” He quickly threw his support to Vice President Kamala Harris, perhaps the worst campaigner in American history. This blocked the Pelosi, Obama, and Clinton plan for a mini-primary that would create the illusion of a democratic process and give Democrats a fighting chance against Trump.
Biden undercut Harris’s campaign messaging by insisting she was involved lockstep with everything he and his administration had done. At a campaign event in Pennsylvania, he donned a MAGA-colored hat — a gesture of “unity,” he said. Remarkably — nay, hysterically — Biden upstaged crucial Harris events — for example, by making his first-ever appearance in the White House press room to take questions right when Harris was doing a crucial interview on The View.
Most astonishingly, when Harris was giving her final pitch in a massive, star-studded event across from the White House — an event to which Biden was not invited — he made an unexpected appearance on a political Zoom call where he promptly called MAGA voters “garbage.” Harris’s speech quickly became a footnote to the day.
When Trump beat Harris, few people seemed happier about it than Joe Biden. The guy he’d spent years calling a “threat to democracy” was suddenly being greeted with the same love and smiles he showed Hunter’s Communist Chinese business partners.
Which gets to the last bit of Joe Biden’s 2024: Now that he is heading out the door, the National Archives has finally released photos showing him schmoozing with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business partners during his terms as the nation’s vice president. In other words, pictures of the meetings Biden insisted he never had, and dealings that we know put money in the Big Guy’s pockets.
Joe Biden’s year ends with him wandering aimlessly through the Amazon and vacationing in the tropics, already a ghost in Washington — his cover-ups and corruption exposed, his record ranking about the worst of any president in history, his pardons of Hunter and commutations of sentences for death row inmates leaving a bad taste in the public’s mouth.
But look at the bright side. Biden’s still got his prized Corvette, millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains … and plenty of time to spend with the granddaughter he’s been ignoring.
Coda
“The Tale of Two Presidents” has one last coda. According to a Saturday profile in the Washington Post, Joe Biden now regrets dropping out of the race, insisting that he would have beaten Donald Trump.
No harm letting him think that, given his insignificance at this point. Trump himself has said that Biden, despite his incapacities, would have been a tougher foe than Harris.
Instead, the two men will meet up again on January 20 to partake in the peaceful transfer of power, a meeting that will likely be all smiles — a far cry from the drama of 2021, and a fitting cap to the astonishing political year of 2024.
Along The Stream…
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Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.