Jill Biden’s Optimism in Believing She Can Help her Husband and the Country Following Debate Setback is Dubious

In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s debate debacle, there is one constant: Dr. Jill’s delusional self-belief that she can save the day.

Under the thrall of her Rasputin-like adviser Anthony Bernal, the first lady is acting as if she is the candidate — at the expense of her husband and the country.

She is the keeper of Biden delusions.

“Joe, you did such a great job,” she shrieked after commandeering the microphone at the debate after-party in Atlanta, as her downcast husband stood on stage gaping at her uncomprehendingly.

“You answered every question!” she gushed in a gratingly patronizing tone, like a nursery schoolteacher who hates kids.

The whole world knew he did a terrible job. Even Joe knew.

But that’s the problem with habitual lying. It swallows you in delusion eventually.

You could see the emergence of Jill’s rival court in recent months as Joe faded and she embarked on a frenetic round of solo campaigning, always with Bernal, whom she calls her “work husband.”

Bernal was by her side when she swanned into Hunter’s gun trial in Wilmington in her finest designer threads last month to project presidential power on the yokels in the jury.

You can see how she depends on Bernal by the knowing glances they exchange when Joe is going off the rails, as he did at Waffle House where they dragged him after the debate when he should have been in bed.

As Joe babbled to random customers, Bernal turned to look at Jill and raised both eyebrows in an expression of alarm.

Iron control

These days Joe always plays second fiddle to his wife.

Jill makes it clear she has more important things to do than play exasperated nursemaid to her doddering husband.

You could see it in France when she left a disoriented Joe to the mercies of a reluctant Brigitte Macron while she strode ahead with French President Emmanuel Macron. You saw it over the weekend when she was having the time of her life hobnobbing with the rich and famous in East Hampton while Joe’s face seemed locked in a rictus grimace.

Naturally, she spoke first at the fundraiser at the $147 million mansion of a hedge-fund billionaire, where reporters were instructed to wear shoe covers.

The problem is that the reality of Dr. Jill doesn’t measure up to her delusions of grandeur.

She will never be the candidate, no matter how many upbeat polls Bernal shows her about her popularity with suburban women. She’s not helping her husband or the country. She increasingly is being blamed for Joe’s decision to run for re-election and refusal to step aside, as stories start filtering out about the iron control she and Bernal keep over Joe, not even allowing White House residence staff near him.

They were so delusional they thought they could keep his cognitive decline a secret.

But you have to ask why Jill and the rest of the insular group of family and aides who know Joe best chose a 9 p.m. debate time and left him on stage without notes. They knew he couldn’t sustain 90 minutes on what’s left of his wits.

Minutes into the debate his campaign issued the excuse that he was suffering from a cold. When that excuse fell flat, the new talking point was that Joe is able to do the job of president between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. each day. But “outside that time range or while traveling abroad, Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued,” aides told Axios.

Now they tell us?

The same people who have lied to us for four years that Joe is sharp and on his game 24/7, and in fact is a “super-ager,” as University of Illinois longevity researcher S. Jay Olshansky claimed, now admit he exhibits signs of sundowning, a common symptom of dementia.

Two weeks ago they dismissed as “cheap fakes” videos showing Joe acting disoriented and lost at the G-7 in Italy and having to be led off stage by Barack Obama in LA.

But instead of being chagrined when their lie was exposed to the world Thursday night, they are busy weaving new lies.

Now they claim Joe crashed and burned in the debate because Donald Trump is a liar and Biden is too honest. They’re trying to portray Joe, a pathological liar, as a truth-teller.

Sure, Trump exaggerates — his crowds are the biggest, his economy was the best, the typical braggadocio of a Queens property developer.

But as Scott Adams, the author and cartoonist, says on X, “Trump’s hyperbole is directionally accurate and benign. Biden’s lies (Fine People Hoax, J6 insurrection Hoax, stealing your democracy, dictator for a day) are dangerous.”

Joe and his boosters pretend that he is “decent” while Trump is morally deranged. Yet Trump has five well-adjusted adult children who adore him, while Biden’s two adult children are drug addicts, and Hunter got his widowed sister-in-law hooked on crack when he had an affair with her.

No happy family has to stage constant public displays of affection.

No “honest Joe” is involved in habitual lies, plagiarism and corruption.

No “modest Joe,” the “poorest man in Congress,” lives in a DuPont mansion with a ballroom or a custom-built mansion on a lake in Chateau country in Greenville, Del., or pays cash for a beach house in Rehoboth.

Everything Joe has ever told you about himself for 50 years is a lie.

Joe has lied for so long that he has come to believe his own lies — his uncle was eaten by cannibals, he was top of his class, he grew up in the black church, his father was a coal miner.

‘Lies’ in wait

The problem is that lies are contagious. Clearly the Biden family is afflicted, as we saw when his son Hunter and brother Joe allegedly lied under oath to Congress. Jill lies about Joe when she goes on “The View” and declares he has “integrity, he’s strong . . . smart . . . energetic.” Yet she knows the truth as well as anyone.

Worse still, there is contagion for all of us when we have a commander in chief who is a habitual liar. It sickens a nation and turns it towards totalitarianism.

Ultimately lies become self-delusion and the habitual liar loses the ability to discern fact from fiction. It gets worse as the brain ages. Lies eventually impair the memory because it is too hard to keep track.

A lifetime of lies came crashing down on Biden Thursday night in a display that can never be unseen. Lies have consequences.