Axios story gives a hint as to why the Democrats and the flying monkeys of the media have focused entirely on Trump’s "corruption"

/

Axios is hardly a tool of the right wing conspiracy; in fact, the very-useful and neutral AllSides rates it as Left-Leans Left”. So this article on Axios is interesting, if only because it wasn’t covered or mentioned by the publication’s usual collaborators:

Biden officials "awed" by Trump's rule-breaking Middle East moves

President Trump's recent series of audacious foreign policy moves have astounded even some of his harshest critics.

The big picture: Just in the Middle East and just in the past week, Trump has met with a leader the U.S. officially considers a terrorist, announced he'll lift all sanctions on Syria, and cut a truce with the Houthis plus a hostage deal with Hamas, both of which excluded Israel.

What they're saying: Biden administration veterans who spoke with Axios raised questions about Trump's motivations but grudgingly saluted his boldness.

  • "Gosh, I wish I could work for an administration that could move that quickly," one admitted.

  • "He does all this, and it's kind of silence, it's met with a shrug," says Ned Price, a former senior State Department official under President Biden. "He has the ability to do things politically that previous presidents did not, because he has complete unquestioned authority over the Republican caucus."

  • "It's hard not to be simultaneously terrified at the thought of the damage he can cause with such power, and awed by his willingness to brazenly shatter so many harmful taboos," says Rob Malley, who held senior posts in three Democratic administrations, including handling Iran talks under Presidents Obama and Biden.

Zoom out: On issue after issue, Trump is taking steps no recent president would have even considered.

  • He abandoned the unified Western position to back Ukraine "as long as it takes" by negotiating directly with Vladimir Putin and declaring that Kyiv will never get Crimea back and must cut a deal now.

  • He inserted himself directly in the recent Kashmir crisis, something past administrations have avoided so as not to antagonize India.

  • He endorsed direct talks with Iran and shrugged off hawks at home and abroad who tied the Obama and Biden administrations in knots. It helps that many of them, like Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, are loath to cross Trump.

Zoom in: On Syria, Trump's own State Department had espoused a policy similar to the Biden administration's before it — sanctions relief might be possible if militant-turned-statesman Ahmed al-Sharaa's government met a number of criteria, such as suppressing extremist groups.

  • That meant that, somewhat perversely, the new administration was being strangled by sanctions imposed on the dictator they toppled. But it was also just the way these things work, until Trump decided it wasn't.

  • "It's so clearly the right decision," said Ben Rhodes, a national security aide to President Obama, on the "Pod Save the World" podcast. "I don't know why Joe Biden didn't do this."

  • "I don't like Trump's motivations for lots of things he does," Rhodes continued, "but one thing you will say is he's not tied to this constant fear of some bad faith right-wing attacks or stupid Blob-type, 'we don't do this, we must leverage the sanctions for blah blah blah.' No! Sometimes you just have to try something different."

Perhaps most shocking to veterans of previous administrations, Trump authorized direct talks with Hamas last month that Israeli officials only learned about through espionage (or by reading Axios).

Driving the news: This week, Trump's envoy-for-everything Steve Witkoff used backchannel talks to negotiate the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, undercutting Israel's own negotiating tactics.

  • "I suspect Witkoff doesn't have to look over his shoulder as much as others have. His predecessors have had to make sure the secretary of defense is on board and the secretary of the Treasury is on board, and the head of the CIA is on board. He just does it," the former Biden official said.

Flashback: The Biden administration considered but ultimately rejected opening direct talks with Hamas.

  • "This is not about President Biden, this is about President Trump and the advantage that he has with Bibi [Netanyahu]," Price said. "If the Biden administration had done something like this, Bibi would have gone out guns blazing."

  • Now, even with the daylight between him and Trump growing more glaring, Netanyahu is keeping uncharacteristically quiet.

The flipside: Trump has also not pushed back hard as Netanyahu cut off all aid to Gaza, refused to budge in ceasefire negotiations, and announced a military operation to flatten and occupy the enclave.

  • Price argues that's the more nefarious side of Trump's a-la-carte "America First" approach.

  • "Unfortunately, we have a real-life experiment going on right now where we see exactly what happens when an administration abdicates that concerted pressure on the Israelis."

Between the lines: All the former Democratic officials who spoke to Axios questioned Trump's motives, even for policies they personally agreed with, noting that he's not just breaching norms to make peace, but also to sell cryptocurrency, expand his real estate portfolio or obtain a $400 million jet.

  • The Syria announcement notably came at the urging of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, two leaders fluent in Trump-style transactionalism.

Murphy On Trump’s Middle East Trip: This Is A National Security Disaster And A Moral Abomination.

His handlers, family, and staff knew it; the media went along with it; and now whoever was running the country these past four years has put out the word: shut up about it. (Updated 2x)

/

pulling him back from the edge of disaster

Here’s a summary:

Biden stumbles over words, struggles with key memories — including year son Beau died — during Special Counsel Hur interview, leaked audio reveals

Former President Joe Biden rambled through an October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur— repeatedly losing his train of thought and struggling to recall key details of his political and personal life, including when his son died, newly released audio of the sitdown shows.

“Well, um, I, I, I, I, I, I don’t know,” Biden, then 80, responded to one question about where he would store papers related to his post-vice presidential work at the Penn Biden Center, his memoir “Promise Me, Dad” and the Cancer Moonshot initiative.

Biden sat down with Hur and co-counsel Marc Krickbaum Oct. 8-9 as part of a probe ordered by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland into the 46th president’s unlawful retention of national security papersfrom his time as Barack Obama’s No. 2, as well as a senator from Delaware.

The Biden administration had refused to release the audio tapes of the interviews with Hur, which were obtained by Axios on Friday, arguing that they contained protected “law enforcement materials.” 

Biden, speaking slowly with his voice fading in and out, repeatedly requested assistance figuring out the years of certain events. 

“This is what, 2017, 18, in that area?” he asked in response to the special counsel’s question about the post-vice presidency activities.

“Yes, sir,” Hur responded.

The former president, pausing throughout his answer, then appeared to believe that the events of 2017 and 2018 corresponded with when he left the Senate (2009) and his son Beau Biden’s death (2015).

“Remember, in this time frame, my son is … uh … would’ve been deployed or is dying and so … it was … and by the way there were still a lot of people at the time, when I got out of the Senate, that were encouraging me to run in this period — except the president,” Biden said.

After a digression about his presidential ambitions and former President Barack Obama’s reluctance to support him, Biden said: “What was happening though was … what month did Beau die? Oh god, May 30 …”

“2015,” one of his lawyers chimed in.  

“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked.

“It was,” the lawyer responded.

“I think it was 2015,” Biden, still unsure, said.

The former president — still less than three minutes into his response to Hur’s question about his document storage practices — then needed to be reminded what year President Trump was elected to his first term. 

“And what happened in the meantime is that uh … as … and … Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” Biden haltingly asks. 

Even after an attorney clarified that Trump was elected in 2016, Biden still sounded confused.  

“2016, alright so … Why do I have 2017 here?” Biden said. 

“That’s when you left office — in January of 2017,” his lawyer responded.

Then Biden hesitantly asked: “That’s when Trump got sworn in, isn’t it?”

He then rambled about the title of the memoir and appeared to become emotional while discussing Beau, prompting Hur to suggest they pause for a bit after Biden trailed off.      

“Sir, I’m wondering if this is a good time to take a break, briefly, would that be …” Hur asked before Biden shot down the suggestion. 

“No, let me just keep going and get it done,” he insisted. 

Hur’s two three-hour sessions with Biden and his legal team took place in the White House’s Map Room, where the former president’s frequent pauses are accentuated by the sound of a ticking clock in the background. 

And now the coverup enters Stage Two:

UPDATE And very much related:

JONATHAN TURLEY: Biden not the only loser revealed by shocking Hur audio

Media that protected Biden until it couldn't now shamelessly profits off the story they hid

…. The interview shows that in 2023 it was clear that Biden was mentally diminished despite claims from many allies and former aides that there was a sudden loss of capacity just before the disastrous debate in 2024. It is now undeniable that the White House staff actively hid the president's incompetence from the American public. That includes the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (who left her post in May 2022) and her successor, Karine Jean-Pierre, who insisted that Biden was sharp and "running circles" around the staff.

Of course, the media is now covering the story after the public saw the truth in the debate. Figures like CNN's Jake Tapper have even written books that belatedly pursue the question despite previously insisting that there was no evidence of a diminishment in Biden's mental state.

Tapper repeatedly dismissed the claim and even excoriated Lara Trump for raising it. In one interview, he pushed a White House talking point that such suggestions were mocking Biden for a childhood stutter.

"It's so amazing to me- a ‘cognitive decline,’" he told the president's daughter-in-law. "I think you were mocking his stutter. Yeah. I think you were mocking his stutter and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody's cognitive decline. I would think somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar."

When Lara Trump insisted that this was clearly evidence of a "very concerning" cognitive decline, Tapper dismissed her statement by saying, "Thank you, Lara. I'm sure it's from a place of concern. We all believe that."

Keep in mind that others beyond Lara Trump were raising this issue and there were tapes showing obvious physical and mental decline. The media simply refused to seriously pursue the story until the cover-up no longer mattered after the debate.

Over on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough was equally apoplectic at those raising the issue and stated

"Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I have known him for years…If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it

This media effort continued all the way up the debate itself. On CNN.com, Oliver Darcy wrote "Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate."

Once the public found out, the media was ready to tell the story when it became impossible, and no longer politically beneficial, to deny it. Articles began to appear with the same realization of, "Oh you meant THAT mental decline. Well sure."

It was the same belated acknowledgment that came, after the election, with Hunter Biden's laptop. The media just moved on with a shrug and a collective "our bad" concession.

….

The real indictment that comes out of these tapes is a type of political racketeering enterprise by the Washington establishment. It took a total team effort from Democratic politicians to the White House staff to the media to hide the fact that the president of the United States was mentally diminished. If there were a political RICO crime, half of Washington would be frog marched to the nearest federal courthouse.

Of course, none of this complicity in the cover-up is an actual crime. It is part of the Washington racket.

After all, this is Washington where such duplicity results not in plea deals but book deals.

UPDATE 2: Newsweek has a nice compilation of who was lying to the public during Biden’s term of senility, including Pete ButtonCheeks and, of course, CT’s Murphy.

Here’s our (other) native prevaricater:

Transcript: Sen. Chris Murphy on "Face the Nation," Feb. 11, 2024

Listen, I'm somebody that's worked intimately with the President, right. I worked with him on the bipartisan gun bill. He was involved in every step of that process, not only constructing the bill, but winning individual Republican votes; it would not have passed, if not for Joe Biden. And what has happened since we passed that bill, a 12% reduction in urban homicides in this country. There are literally thousands of people alive in this nation today. Because Joe Biden is incredibly competent, and he's incredibly effective.

Those 11,000,000 — 23,000,000 illegals Biden let into the country? They're here to stay

/

Have you ever been infuriated by reading a story about thugs barging into someone else’s house and refusing to leave, while the rightful owner is told he must pursue a years-long eviction process through the courts because these people have established “squatters rights?” That’s what happened Friday, on a national scale.

I’d seen a few cautiously optimistic reactions to the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision requiring individual “due process hearings” for each person who came across the border these past 4 years, with or without official permission, but “Legal Insurrection’s Professor William Jacobson shares my own dire view: we’re screwed.

The deep damage from the Biden administration’s treasonous open borders policy, which deliberately imported millions of illegal aliens, including large numbers of criminals and gang members, is playing out as the Trump administration tries to undo the damage and danger.

The numbers are so large that they overwhelm the system. Trump tried to address the problem as to a particularly vicious gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), by invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), which allows summary removal. That effort has been stymied by multiple courts, incuding the Supreme Court, ruling that persons subject to removal under the AEA are entitled to due process before removal. Depending what the due process looks like may render deportation efforts futile – you can’t have millions of trials, even if they are truncated proceedings.

Is the Constitution a suicide pact? We’re in the process of finding out.

…. The bottom line is the Supreme Court put everything on hold, and told the 5th Circuit to figure out what type of due process the TdA members should get. Removal of TdA members through other statutory authority, other than AEA, could continue:

Jacobson: “So it continues. Millions flow in illegally, but only a relative trickle can flow out. This is an untenable situation.

(FWIW) The decision goes far beyond whether these people can be removed using a novel method of applying the Aliens and Sedition Act — as the court notes “[T] he Government may remove the named plaintiffs or putative class members under other lawful authorities” but those are meaningless words when coupled with the requirement that government conduct individual hearings for each and every one of them.

The backlog for these hearings is currently 6-10 years, and that’s for those who have legally applied for entry, many of whom are still in their home countries waiting for admission. Biden’s millions are here now, and having made it across the border by whatever means, can only be removed on a case-by-case basis. That’s impossible, as was always the plan, so, while we might see a few of the very worst of the child rapists and drug dealers kicked out, the vast, vast majority of these people are now permanent residents, and their spawn will be citizens.

Welcome to your new world.

New listing (just about) on the Banksville border

/

427 Taconic Road, $5.2 million, a slight increase from its June ‘23 purchase price of $4.825.

  • The 3-acre lot this was built on was originally offered for sale in 2008 — not a propitious time for Greenwich back country vendors — and finally sold in 2016 for $1.145.

  • A house went up, put on the market that year for $3.995 million and eventually found a buyer in 2019 at $2.8.

  • Improvements were made, it wss re-listed in 2022 at $5.5 million, and sold to the present owner in 2023 at the aforesaid $4.825.

Now and then Murphy

/

But:

June 5, 2024:

Biden allies in overdrive to dispel reports he is too old for the job

February 12, 2024:

Democrats line up behind Biden after special counsel report as polls show voter concerns about age

“I'm someone who's worked intimately with the president. I worked with him on the bipartisan gun bill. He was involved in every step of that process, not only constructing the bill, but winning individual Republican votes. It would not have passed, if not for Joe Biden,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “There are literally thousands of people alive in this nation today because Joe Biden is incredibly competent, and he's incredibly effective.”

“He is also somebody that has been the only one member of our party who has effectively beaten Donald Trump in a general election. So I know that he is ready for this campaign,” Murphy added.

Here’s a nice roundup of the great man lying to his constituents and his pet media monkeys:

Chris Murphy’s Shifting Narrative: From Defending Biden’s Vigor to Admitting Cognitive Decline

  • Throughout 2024, Murphy staunchly defended Biden’s mental acuity, praising his effectiveness and dismissing concerns, only to admit in May 2025 that Biden’s cognitive decline was undeniable.

  • February 11, 2024: “There’s not a problem. This president is going to be able to sell a record that is extraordinary!”

  • June 5, 2024: “I’ve watched Biden ‘run circles around senators inside the Oval Office’.”

  • July 6, 2024: “I’ve worked with Joe Biden. I’ve been on the phone with him, I’ve been in the room with him. This is one of the most effective presidents that I’ve ever served under. I believe that he can do it, but I think that this is a really critical week. I do think the clock is ticking. I support Joe Biden. Period, stop.”

  • July 7, 2024: “I think that Friday night’s interview did not answer all the questions that people in my state have. They want to believe that this is still the old Joe Biden, but they need to see more from the president.”

  • May 14, 2025: “There’s no doubt about it. The debate is whether it was enough that it compromised his ability to act as chief executive.”

  • May 14, 2025: “I mean, isn’t that self-evident? We lost. Obviously, in retrospect, we should have done something different.”

Related only in as far as it provides another example of this duplicitous dipshit, this:

I’m not going to waste my time listening to two let alone twenty minutes of this fraudulent pipsqueak, but I was entertained by the comments from his faithful; boy, if these are typical of the sheeple’s intolerance for corruption, they must have gone wild when Biden pardoned his entire family for their criminal enterprise.

@sbsmusic3053

Thank you Sen. Murphy!! Never stop exposing and documenting his corruption. This is not normal, this is criminal.

@corronnevictorieux1

Handling his personal business, on taxpayer time and dime is illegal, fraudulent and deceiptful. The American People INSIST he be held accountable. Thank You. 🇺🇸️

@CommonsenseMK

How does this not fall under the act of treason? He needs to be immediately removed from the office. He is a national threat, the same as a terrorist.

@SonofNun123

Time for US ALL to Write to Our Representatives and DEMAND that They start IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS against Donald Trump IMMEDIATELY... TIME FOR ACTION

@starbright158

WE THE PEOPLE WANT HIM GONE!!!!!WE CAN NOT TAKE 3/12 YEARS OF HIMTHE THOUGHT OF THAT MAKES ME SICK

@carriesutton2717

These Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for not holding this criminal accountable!!!! Shame on each of you for not standing up to this criminality!!!!!

@willv7868

This level of corruption makes me feel sick. This needs to stop.

@sarahlopresti8892

When are we gonna wake up and join forces to stop this. Thank you senator murphy.

@aprilerains4578

Our country is no longer safe.

@debramcneil2299

Senator Murphy, informative, thought provoking message to the American voters,! Senator Murphy thank you for your service in behalf of your constituents and the American people! "God's Speed"!

@KatEyze1015

This is making me physically ill!!!!!!! We've had ENOUGH meetings!!!! GET THE RAT OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW!!!

@QuietlyPassingBy

Thank You Senator Murphy for continuing to speak truth to power!!!

@Sam-p3t8f

Thank you for standing up to Trump for his corruption and his Lawlessness that he's doing to the American people and the Country of the United States of America too