On Sunday it was revealed to the public that President Joe Biden had been diagnosed with a “more aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. Dr. Zeke Emanuel said Monday on MSNBC that it’s more likely Biden “had it while he was president.” That means that on top of the obvious cognitive impairment, Biden may have also been suffering from an aggressive cancer, further calling into question who was actually making key decisions during his administration.
Here are five of the most consequential decisions of the Biden presidency that, in light of this diagnosis, have many Americans asking whether Biden was truly the one behind them.
Appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant after Justice Stephen Breyer stepped down in 2022. Prior to taking office, Biden made nominating a black woman to the Supreme Court a top priority, as pointed out by The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd. Jackson had notable shortcomings — including the inability to define what a woman is because she is “not a biologist.”
Pardons And Commutations, Oh My!
Biden gave preemptive pardons to former Rep. Liz Cheney, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, Adam Schiff and others who sat on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol as well as to the “police officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department or the U.S. Capitol Police who testified before” the committee, according to The Lawfare Institute.
Biden also issued pardons to his brother, James Biden, James’ wife Sara, his other brother Francis T. Biden, and his sister Valerie T. Owens along with her husband John T. Owens.
As noted by The Federalist’s Beth Brelje, “To be pardoned for a crime, there must be a crime. None of the people on this list have been charged for the awful ways they harmed people in their official capacities.”
Biden also announced in December that he was granting 39 pardons and 1,499 commutations in what his administration described as the “largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”
Weeks before that set of pardons and commutations, Biden quietly commuted the sentences of two Chinese spies. In one case, Yanjun Xu was convicted in 2022 for “conspiracy to commit economic espionage; conspiracy to commit trade secret theft; attempted economic espionage by theft or fraud; attempted theft of trade secrets by taking or deception.”
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But Biden’s commutation said “it is in the national interest that the term of imprisonment related to the aforesaid conviction not be served in its entirety.”
The Deadly Afghanistan Withdrawal
On August 26,2021, thirteen U.S. service members were killed during what has now become known as the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. The same withdrawal also left thousands of Americans, U.S. allies and their families stranded. A report from the State Department later confirmed that Biden’s execution of the withdrawal “posed significant challenges for the Department.”
Biden rushed the withdrawal which “compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers,” the report found. Biden’s lack of planning “had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security.”
Notably, Biden also left billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment behind for U.S. enemies to use while allowing hundreds of Afghans on the Pentagon’s watchlist to enter the U.S. without proper vetting.
Open Borders
Biden allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood the country — and made it easier for them to do so. As explained by Tristan Justice in these pages, Biden stopped construction of the border wall, “expanded the ‘illegal’ Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” reversed “Trump-era executive orders that enforced immigration law,” issued a deportation moratorium, lost track of thousands of children illegally in the country, resurrected an Obama-era parole program for illegals and more.
Despite the urgent need for border security, Biden falsely claimed he lacked the authority to secure the border and said he had “done all I can do.”
As The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson pointed out, “A secure border was always within reach” during the Biden years but “Biden and the Democrats sold out their fellow Americans, threw open the borders, and then pretended they had no choice in the matter.”
COVID
Biden issued an announcement about a purported vaccine mandate for private companies employing 100 people or more just months after taking office. Biden also, as reported by Boyd, encouraged businesses “to adopt vaccine mandated and plotted a vaccine passport program that would deny Americans work or access to society based on their Covid-19 vaccination status.” The Biden administration also required all federal employees and contractors to get the vaccine or lose their jobs.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
