What didn’t the president know, and when didn’t he know it?

In 1973, Sen. Howard Baker Jr. (R-TN) asked a now famous question about Richard Nixon and the Watergate break-in: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” If Speaker Mike Johnson is reporting accurately about a meeting with Joe Biden last year, the important question is, “What didn’t the president know, and when didn’t he know it?”

Conservatives have been saying since the 2020 presidential race that Joe Biden was in the early stages of dementia. His performance during the Democrat party debates was dismal (who can forget his advice to parents that they should “have the record player on at night” for their children?), and his presidency was marked by one bizarre, disconnected, blank-minded gaffe after another.

By March 2021, six weeks after Biden’s inauguration, Sally Zelikovsky already had enough material to say with confidence that Joe was in the early stages of dementia. In the years since then, American Thinker and other conservative outlets have hammered home that point, only to have Democrat politicians and media figures assure us that he was as sharp as a tack.

Image by Andrea Widburg

That lie imploded when Donald Trump turned to Biden after the latter gave a particularly bafflegab answer during their one debate and said, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” The Emperor stood naked before America.

What was obvious to conservatives all along and became obvious to the rest of America was that Joe Biden was not running his administration. Instead, unknown people were calling the shots. A recent meme perfectly illustrates what happened during the Biden administration:

Here’s a closeup of that last row:

Now, Speaker Johnson reports on a very disturbing interaction he had with Joe Biden roughly a year ago, shortly after Biden issued an executive order “announcing a temporary pause on pending decisions on exports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to non-FTA countries until the Department of Energy can update the underlying analyses for authorizations.” It was only thanks to a judge putting a pause on the pause that LNG exporters were saved. Moving forward, President Trump promises to reverse the executive order entirely.

According to Mike Johnson, though, Biden never intended to pause LNG exports. In the video below, Johnson describes his increasingly desperate efforts in early 2024 to meet with Biden about a national security issue. Eventually, Biden’s praetorian guard allowed Johnson into Biden’s presence. However, the guard refused to leave until Biden finally gave the nod, at which point they reluctantly filed out.

Once alone with Biden, Johnson quizzed Biden about the “pause” on LNG exports. Shockingly, Biden had no idea what Johnson was talking about, although the conversation a mere three weeks or so after Biden issued the order:

...I said, “Mr. President, thanks for the moments. You know, this is very important. I’ve got some big national security things I need to talk to you about that I’ve heard, and I think you know, and what do you do, but first, real quickly, Mr. President, can I ask you a question?”

“I cannot answer this for my constituents in Louisiana. Sir, why did you pause LNG exports? I don’t understand. Liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that? ’Cause you understand, we just talked about Ukraine. You understand you’re fueling Vladimir Putin’s war machine because they’ve [our allies] got to get their gas from him?” 

And he looks at me, stunned, and he said, “I didn’t do that.” And I said, “Mr. President, yes you did, it was an executive order like three weeks ago.” He said, “No, I didn’t do that,” and he was arguing with me.

I said, “Mr. President, respectively, could I go out here and ask your secretary to print it out? We’ll read it together. You definitely did that.”

And he goes, “Oh, you talk about natural gas?”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “No, no. You misunderstand,” he said. “What I did is I signed this thing [because] we’re going to conduct a study on the effects of LNG.”

I said, “No, you’re not, sir. You paused it. I know. I have the terminal, the export terminals in my state, I talked to those people this morning. This is doing massive damage to our economy...to our national security.”

It occurred to me, Barry, he was not lying to me. He genuinely did not know what he had signed. And I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing because I thought, “We are in serious trouble. Who’s running the country?” I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know.

Aside from revealing how the American people were victims of a truly terrifying lie, one that goes to the very roots of our representative government, there are other things that need to be considered. Only the president has the power to do certain things, including issuing executive orders.

Does the fact that Biden was so senile he had no idea what he was doing, allowing unelected shadow figures to push their policies through him, mean that all of his executive orders—or at least those since January 2024, should be declared void? Given all the actions that Biden (actually, whoever is pulling the strings) has taken since the election (and that he’ll probably still take tomorrow and Monday morning, given the chance), voiding his acts would be a good thing.

Biden’s orders in the last three months have been deliberately aimed at thwarting the will of the American people by making it impossible for Trump to fulfill his promises. If a few people can be guaranteed immunity for admitting that they knew all along that Biden was senile (and yes, it will be painful to give them a pass), perhaps Trump can start his administration with a clean slate.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/01/what_didn_t_the_president_know_and_when_didn_t_he_know_it.html