Democrats, Deep State, And Media Are Real Threats To Democracy

Since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate two weeks ago, the country has witnessed a crazed spectacle as the Biden administration, the left, and the press scrambled to control the narrative. For the first time in at least a decade, however, there was no agreed-upon solution to the problem of Biden.

There was nonetheless one unified message: Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. Yet the fallout from Biden’s dementia-laced performance reveals that the true existential threat to America comes from Trump’s enemies, not the former president.

Anti-Democracy Democrats

Consider, for instance, the calls for Joe Biden to step down as the Democrat candidate for president, which began even before the first lady helped her husband down the steps of the CNN stage in Atlanta. Those urging the president to abandon his reelection campaign frame the issue at hand as Biden’s inability to effectively campaign and defeat Trump in November. They raise no concerns over Biden’s continued service as commander-in-chief, however.

To replace Biden on the November ballot would require the DNC to disregard its primary voters who selected the president as their candidate of choice, and that is after the party purposefully kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the primary ballot. It would be one thing to put aside the outcome of the primary because the party concluded Biden can’t serve as commander-in-chief. But no Democrats seem to be taking that position. All they care about is beating Trump.

That theme remained paramount even two weeks into the scandal. Frankly, it is quite shocking to see a stream of Democrats parading before the cameras and calling for Biden to quit the race, yet hypocritically ignoring his inability to continue serving as president.

Wednesday offered a perfect illustration of this bizarre juxtaposition when longtime DNC booster George Clooney proclaimed the party should replace Biden on the ticket. Significantly, Clooney said that “the president he saw at a fundraiser in June ‘was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.’”

And what we all witnessed at the debate was a man incapable of executing the duties of the president of the United States! Yet Clooney made no call for Biden to step down as president.

Every member of the Biden administration saw often and in close quarters the reality Clooney witnessed last month. Yet rather than use the procedures provided for in the 25th Amendment, they opt to run the presidency for Biden — another gross attack on America’s constitutional republic.

Biden backers are no better, for they too recognize the incapacity of the president and justify retaining him at the top of the ticket merely because they believe he represents their best chance to defeat Trump in the general election. But if elected, Biden will be nothing but a figurehead, with the unknown permanent political class running the executive branch in his stead.

Corrupt Media

The press’s response to Biden’s crumbling on the Atlanta stage is equally appalling — not because they ignored what every American saw but because they pretended the president and his handlers deceived them about Biden’s condition. And make no mistake: The media haven’t found journalism. Rather, the legacy press’s current harsh coverage of Biden serves only to force Democrats to replace him on the ticket before it is too late.

Two weeks before the debate, the media had no qualms about lying to Americans about Biden’s mental capacity, peddling the narrative that evidence of his cognitive condition was a cheap fake. Only after an abysmal 90-minute exhibition by the president — which made it impossible for the press to continue to hide the truth — did coverage change. Even then, the legacy press refused to provide balanced coverage of the debate, which would have presented Biden as both incompetent and a liar. Instead, the corporate media framed Biden as a cognitively challenged truth-teller, while branding even pure puffery by Trump as lies.

Watching the legacy media finally challenge Democrats over Biden’s condition provides a stark reminder that the press hasn’t been doing its job of truth-telling for a long time. On the contrary, over the last eight years, the corrupt media have interfered in our elections and the governance of our elected officials, from pushing the Russia hoax to framing the Hunter Biden laptop as disinformation, and everything in between. The free press of generations past has become a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, and self-government is suffering as a result.

Bad Bureaucrats

Democrats are not the only ones partnering with the press to obstruct the will of the American people: The hordes of bureaucrats controlling the three branches of government are equally complicit.

In New York, we saw a conflicted state court judge enter ruling upon ruling against Donald Trump, leading to his conviction on trumped-up criminal charges — charges that allow Democrats to now brand the Republican as a convicted felon. And that is only one of the many cases targeting the former president to keep him out of the White House. Prosecuting political enemies is the stuff of banana republics, not our great republic.

Before that and during his time in office, the FBI and intelligence agencies sought to oust Trump, with another bureaucrat launching the first impeachment canard based on a call between the commander-in-chief and Ukraine. Those opposing the duly elected 45th president took such pride in their attacks on the man Americans choose to lead our country that they self-identified as “the resistance.”

Other bureaucrats conspired with social media companies to silence Trump and his supporters. And current and former members of intelligence agencies conspired with the Biden campaign to deceive the American public the month before the 2020 election that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

It is not Trump who represents an existential threat to our country but those who seek to supplant the choice of the people and the Constitution and rule the country according to their own predilections. In other words, it’s Democrats, the corrupt media, and the vast bureaucratic apparatus controlling our elections.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.