As it becomes more and more evident that President Joe Biden is undergoing significant cognitive decline, his staff has been working to find ways to combat that narrative. The latest person charged with the unenviable task of pushing that sort of message is Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates. This week he told Politico that Biden is obviously still at the top of his game and as evidence pointed to the President's "aggressive" travel schedule. He even attempted to claim that Biden's travel schedule exceeds that of Donald Trump. The Washington Free Beacon decided to do some fact-checking of this astonishing claim and the results will likely not come as a surprise to most of you.

CNN truth expert Daniel Dale did not return an email inquiry about whether or not he was planning to fact-check this claim, so the Washington Free Beacon decided to look into it. 

Biden has made 363 trips outside of Washington, D.C., between 2021 and 2023, according to an analysis of presidential travel. Roughly one-quarter (91) of Biden's trips were to Delaware, where he owns a 6,850-square-foot mansion in Wilmington and a beach house in Rehoboth, the site of his infamous bicycle crash. He has spent 279 days at one of those properties, plus an additional 42 days on vacation in other parts of the country, for a total of 321 days, which amounts to nearly one-third of his presidency.

According to our analysis, Biden's travel and vacation schedule during his first three years in office was similar to that of former president Donald Trump, who was ridiculed for frequently visiting his properties in Florida, New Jersey, and Virginia. Trump made 391 trips outside the capital in his first three years in office; roughly one-quarter of those (110 trips) were to properties he owned. He spent a total of 277 days, or roughly one-quarter of his presidency, at Trump-owned properties and didn't vacation elsewhere.

Just based on the raw numbers, it's clear that Joe Biden has indeed done a lot of traveling. But the majority of it was traveling back and forth for vacations. It's true that Donald Trump spent his fair share of time at his private properties, but he also made regular trips to meet with foreign leaders around the world. Those were, of course, not vacation trips.

But it's also important to note that significant amounts of travel do not in any way speak to the question of cognitive issues. Aside from when he's on his bicycle (and not falling off of it) other people drive and fly Joe Biden around. You could do the same thing with a watermelon and claim that it had "an aggressive travel schedule."

To build an accurate evaluation of Biden's cognitive state, we should not be looking at how often he travels but what he does and says when he arrives. The same thing applies to how he performs when he's back home at the White House during the rare times when he emerges from the basement. Most of these appearances have been disturbing horror shows. Just this week during a campaign rally, Biden told the audience of a meeting he'd had with François Mitterrand in 2021, more than a quarter of a century after the man had died. He's also given shoutouts to other deceased individuals while speaking. Were these simple "gaffes" and verbal miscues or does Joe Biden honestly believe he's talking to the dead?

Joe Biden has spent more time on vacation than any other president. When he does make the occasional public appearance, it frequently turns out to be an embarrassing debacle. It's almost difficult to directly blame Biden for the enormous mess that his policies have created in this country and around the world because those decisions are almost certainly being made by a combination of his handlers and the Obamas. But in the end, he needs to be held accountable for all of them anyway.

I can understand how Biden's team would want to try to portray him in a more flattering light, particularly when his approval rating is barely higher than that of most sexually transmitted diseases. But the White House staff needs to stop trying to gaslight the public about all of this. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear can tell that this presidency quickly turned into a train wreck and things are getting worse rather than better.