To paraphrase Buffalo Springfield: There’s something happening here … what it is ain’t exactly UNclear, however.

Earlier today, Beege beat me to the Axios story based on leaks from current and former White House aides about Biden’s lack of self-awareness about his age. Supposedly these aides feel that Biden’s problem is that he’s trying to do too much, even while claiming that the 81-year-old Dotard in Chief is “extraordinarily energetic for his age.” That falls into the realm of gaslighting, as anyone who’s watched Joe Biden in public can attest.

And this part made me almost drench my computer screen with the coffee I sipped while reading it:

Why it matters: Current and former aides say Biden is extraordinarily energetic for his age. But his repeated insistence that he feels so young can draw eye rolls: Some current and former aides believe Biden doesn’t realize how old he can come across. …

Current and former Biden aides say he often pushes to do more travel and events than they think he should.

Biden pushing up against his limits sometimes creates a cycle in which he wears himself out, then appears fatigued during public events — which can increase concerns about his age, even when he’s taking on a rigorous schedule.

Ahem. What “rigorous schedule” might that be? Biden’s taking more vacation than any other president, spending almost as much time in Delaware as in Washington DC. This comes after a presidential campaign that barely put Biden on the trail at all, followed by almost two years of pandemic restrictions that overshadowed his lack of physical stamina for the job. These days, Biden can barely finish an extemporaneous thought on stage, and frequently looks lost when it comes time to leave it.

If Jill Biden wants Joe to have a less-rigorous schedule as President, he’d have to set up his beach chair at Rehoboth as the new Situation Room.

But the timing of this story, especially with its sourcing from “some current and former aides,” seems rather suspicious. Suddenly, everyone wants to talk about Biden’s age, a subject that the national media more or less declared taboo during the 2020 cycle even while Biden barely came out of his basement for the campaign. They’re currently obsessing over Biden’s cratering poll numbers too, without the usual caveats of poll coverage.

And that’s not all. Andy McCarthy noted last night with amazement at NRO that the Washington Post has taken a sudden interest in dot-connecting in the Biden Inc scandals. Their 4000-word deep dive into Biden family corruption ties comes at a time when both the media and the bureaucratic state seem suddenly animated when it comes to the Bidens, but the Post’s sharp turn is especially ominous for Old Joe:

Sunday’s eye-popping 4,000-word Washington Post report on Biden corruption ties is, to my mind, more indication that a serious move is under way within the top ranks of the Democratic Party establishment to nudge President Joe Biden into bowing out of the 2024 presidential race. …

The timing of the Post’s report is thus intriguing. For the president, it will sting for several reasons. First, it’s the Post, a pillar of the Democratic administration’s Praetorian Guard — this is not just more brickbats hurled by House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) and the other Republicans investigating Biden-family influence-peddling. Second, the subject matter of the report goes back to the start of Joe Biden’s Senate career in the early Seventies (yes, the family business goes back decades), meaning the Post has intentionally dredged up unseemly details about Biden’s past that have been vaguely known for decades but that Biden must have figured were long forgotten. Third, the length of the report shows that the Post had to have spent weeks reporting its story; the paper could have dropped this report at any time, but it chose to do so now, when the president and his campaign are reeling.

Andy does a good job in summarizing the Post’s reporting, but let’s just recap: the Biden family got six figures in cash from Richard “Dickie” Scruggs in a deal that eventually led to federal corruption charges and a five-year stretch for Dickie. That deal at one point needed action from Congress to waive anti-trust statutes to get a federal settlement with the tobacco companies, which then-Senator Joe Biden opposed … until his brother got $100,000 from Scruggs, at which point Joe became a True Believer® in the arrangement.

The curious part of the Post’s interest in this Biden Inc episode is that it goes back more than 25 years. The tobacco lawsuits took place in the late 1990s, and while Scruggs didn’t get the waiver at the federal level even with Biden’s help, he scored massive payouts with lawsuits in the states. The crimes for which Scruggs got convicted took place a decade later in unrelated litigation, but which also involved Jim Biden. This isn’t Hunter Biden getting millions in cash from China and Ukraine for nothing more than influence peddling; this involved domestic bribery in which Jim and Hunter were implicated, but curiously never charged or even investigated.

Why is the Post digging up Dickie Scruggs at this point? Why are mainstream media outlets obsessing over Joe Biden’s poll numbers? Why are “current and former aides” in the Biden White House leaking stories that make Biden look old and infirm, and leaking stories that claim Kamala Harris has taken the reins on foreign policy?

The Democrat-progressive establishment is clearly sending a message to the Bidens: Get. Out. One has to wonder what will come next if Biden refuses to leave, to which I can only advise…go long on popcorn stock.

Media narratives are at the heart of my latest conversation with Andrew Malcolm on today’s The Ed Morrissey Show podcast:

• Can’t anyone read a memo? Andrew Malcolm and I have lots of fun deconstructing the terrible way the media covered the latest missive from the Vatican.
• We also discuss the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and the media coverage there too.
• Lastly, I try and fail to give Andrew a new Christmas-based title.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!