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Trump looks really under the weather in his UN speech. He's stumbling through his lines, and while he still has a little bit of the Trump flair at times, overall he looks like he's half asleep, without his normal punchiness. He's almost nothing like his normal rally Trump fieriness from just a year or so ago. His ability to connect threads of thought and guide the monologue in a meaningful way is vastly better than Biden from last year, but his physical health seems bad.
I wonder if age is actually catching up to him or if he just didn't get enough sleep or something. If he's actually this worn out on a regular basis, one might ask the question reminiscent of the Biden administration, which is, what's actually going on in the administration?
One reason why I didn't consider voting for Kamala (of many) was that if she were half-way competent she should have taken control of the Biden White House. Either become President herself, or otherwise controlled things. If the Cabinet didn't think she'd make a good president, why should I?
I give Vance to after the Midterms, when he could serve 2.5 Presidential terms legally. If he doesn't take over and Trump keeps deteriorating to the degree we saw Biden, it tells me that he's not actually a leader. That doesn't necessarily mean the 25th Amendment gets invoked right away, but there would be a clear move of the Cabinet deferring to him, him taking more direct actions, etc.
Well, according to the book excerpts, the Biden staffers and administration and Bidens were determined not to let her do anything like that, so they deliberately kept her overshadowed and in the background, or handed her thankless tasks. Plus, the VP is supposed to stand by and just be ceremonial/decorative, not try to muscle in on the presidential turf.
The sniping between her and some ex-Biden staffers is entertaining, but to be fair, no VP really gets a chance to take over unless the President is pretty much incapable, and in Biden's case there was a combination of "we have to cover this up so as not to give Trump and the Republicans any advantage" and Jill etc. were keeping the reins firmly in their own grip, with no intention whatsoever of handing over power to Kamala at all.
Our Constitution and the 25th Amendment is pretty strong evidence against this. They're the president's backup, expected to take over the role if the president becomes incapacitated.
If Harris couldn't take on Jill Biden, then how can she possibly take on Putin? Why didn't we have Jill running for president instead?
No one intends to hand you the reins, a leader TAKES the reins. Like Jill took the reins. Harris could have gotten the Cabinet on her side and just pulled a 25th, nothing Jill could have done. But the Cabinet preferred a zombie Biden and Jill in charge over Harris.
Likewise, if Trump becomes a zombie, I fully expect Vance to take over, otherwise he's not worth backing for 2028.
That's not what a competent takeover would look like. It would be more like "Weekend At Biden's" for the remainder of the term, and an announcement that he's not going to seek reelection, and is endorsing Kamala from day one.
There's no reason to force someone on your team to go through the humiliation of being declared unfit for office, unless it absolutely cannot be avoided, but the way they handled it was an absolute blunder, preventing anyone from walking away from the situation with their dignity intact.
Yeah, and I hope I was clear in my first comment that I think Vance can do a Weekend at Trump's and that would still show competent leadership. But that's clearly not what Kamala did, she was comfortable getting shut out of the decision tree and then couldn't fight back into a position of leadership.
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