Nearly three dozen House Democrats led by Jimmy Panetta (CA) recently sent a letter to Joe Biden requesting that he give up his unilateral authority to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In the letter, Panetta contends, “Vesting one person with this authority entails risks. Past presidents have threatened to attack other countries with nuclear weapons or exhibited behavior that caused other officials to express concern about the president’s judgment.” Anybody wonder if Biden is cognitively up to the task?

Panetta asserted that his motivation for calling on Biden to give up control of the nation’s nuclear launch codes has everything to do with “checks [and] balances in our nuclear command-and-control structure.” While he makes no mention of Biden’s advanced age and mental acuity, Panetta’s suggestion of requiring both the vice president and speaker of the House to okay any nuclear strike tacitly underscores fears that Biden can’t be trusted with nukes.

Would Panetta be making this same request of Biden if the man were 10 or more years younger?

Just yesterday, Time Magazine published an article titled, “We Need an Operation Warp Speed for Alzheimer’s and Dementia.” Story authors Maria Shriver and George Vradenburg almost humorously observe, “No president has entered the White House with as clear a focus on Alzheimer’s disease as Joe Biden. The commitment and attention on Alzheimer’s at the highest levels of our elected leadership is long overdue.”

While the article goes on to note how Biden has pledged to make seeking a cure for Alzheimer’s a top priority, the obvious elephant in the room is Biden’s own clearly diminishing mental state. Might he have a more personal reason for making it a priority?

What is Panetta’s letter really about? It appears that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using a back-bencher to lay the groundwork for the early Biden exit we have predicted. We have long contended that, given Biden’s obvious diminishing mental state, it’s highly unlikely he’ll serve out the first year of his term. Mark Alexander predicted, in his column last August on the selection of Harris for what he called the “Harris/Biden” ticket, that Biden might only last moths before stepping aside – or being forced to step down for appearances to hide the fact the Democrat power brokers were just using him as a placeholder to get Harris into office. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the Democrats play this ploy to completion.