This goes to the notion that Biden cannot be senile today and also the nominal head of a sprawling criminal enterprise.
I've been involved with and know well people who've been involved in corruption and have gone to prison for years for it. I've seen that up close. I had long conversations with a guy who ended up fronting a mafia-like morass of corrupt ventures that included no-show jobs, bribes, payoffs, extortion, etc.
I'll never forget what he told me once (and the basis of the book I'm still trying to write about all that). "You know, I didn't start out this way. It's like boiling a bullfrog. The temperature kept getting raised a degree at a time and it was tolerable. Then all of a sudden I look around and I'm in a boiling pot with no way to get out."
Part of this guy's hook was his kids. People who had no real skills of their own and lived the good life off daddy's largesse. There's a lot I could tell about that but wait for the book.
Do I believe Biden was always corrupt? I think he always had the capacity to be and it came easily. I truly think it started slowly and then as his kids got compromised it snowballed.
The guy I knew? There came a point where things started to unravel. He had gotten older. Late 60s, early 70s at that point. He was still running all these no-show jobs, manipulating contracts and rigging bids but he started to repeat himself. Would drive somewhere and forget why he'd gone there. Started to confuse names. As his mental skills declined, his kids got more involved and their greed was exponentially greater and their ability to manage all that was exponentially worse. But much like Biden, he backed them and just wanted his cut of whatever scam they rolled with. They were inept.
Having seen that? Seen how people close to him controlled him as he declined, how he would tell stories of things that had a tiny nugget of truth wrapped around an entire foot-long sub of fabrication? It's very similar. He started the gravy train. Despite the bullfrog story, he took those steps knowing that each one was more corrupt than the last. Yes, some of the people he was involved with coerced him into doing things, but for the most part, for every degree the water was raised he got out, turned it up, and got back in the pot. Toward the end, before he went to prison (and died shortly after being released) he'd lost way more than a step. He didn't say or do anything that wasn't scripted for him by his daughter, his wife, his lawyer, his son, or a couple of "advisors" around him. He'd make the same "this is what I'm supposed to say" comments Biden does with the same bemused befuddlement on his face. He'd have occasional bouts of clarity, but then he'd drift off into some horse manure story or he'd get mad and start ranting. And then one of them would lead him away.
Still, the guy was a life-long grifter. It was all he knew.
So don't tell me Biden can't be both. He can be the most corrupt president in US history. That's his entire career, honestly. He can be the least truthful president ever. He's been lying all his life. He can be the most immoral president of all time. He showered with his teenage daughter, started an obsessive (and inappropriate) relationship with his kid's 16-year old babysitter, he raised a drug-addicted sex predator and supports him (actually relies on him as a front for bribery scams). He can also be rapidly losing control of his mental faculties, which he is. But that doesn't slow the grift.
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