The Patriot Post® · Axios Outs 'Old Yeller'

If Joe Biden were a man of his word, he’d have fired himself by now.

To understand why, we need only hearken back to his first full day in office, when he took to a videoconference to warn about 1,000 presidential appointees that he’d fire them “on the spot” if he hears that they’ve been discourteous to others within his administration.

“I’m not joking when I say this,” he vowed. “If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect or talk down to someone, I promise you, I will fire you on the spot — on the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

In saying this, Biden was, of course, taking another lazy swipe at his predecessor, Donald Trump — a man whose record of achievement continues to cast a massive shadow over the weakness and wokeness of the current administration. “Everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity,” said shameless Joe. “That’s been missing in a big way the last four years.”

Welp, as it turns out, “decency and dignity” are in short supply at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days — what, with the lying and the grifting and the race-baiting and the selling-out of our nation to Communist China and Ukraine, and with the hookers and the blow and the despicable deadbeatery that are the hallmarks of the current first family.

But beyond that, there’s the matter of Joe Biden’s demeanor. As Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush, said on Fox News this morning: “He’s just not a good guy. … He’s just not a kind, nice guy.”

Fleischer is being too good, too kind, too nice. Joe Biden is a rotten, backslapping, miserable jerk of a human being. It’s just that the media, until very recently, has refused to show us this side of him.

And by “very recently,” we mean until yesterday, when the normally friendly left-leaners at Axios published a piece that recounts numerous examples of Biden doing exactly the thing he warned others not to do on his first day on the job. Yep, there was Old Yeller — Really Old Yeller — tearing into one hapless staffer after another with, “G*d dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!” And with, “Don’t f***ing bullsh*t me!” And with, “Get the f**k out of here!”

As Axios gently puts it, “The private eruptions paint a more complicated picture of Biden as a manager and president than his carefully cultivated image as a kindly uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream.”

Um, yeah, more complicated. This is Scranton Joey, after all. This is Mr. Nice Guy, the friendly, affable man who was supposed to bring “decency and dignity” back to the White House. The “good Catholic.”

But again, if Joe Biden were a man of his word, these would be firing offenses, right?

This, though, isn’t the mainstream media’s only brand-new broadside at the woefully unpopular 80-year-old president. Take the reliably leftist Atlantic, which last week published a piece titled “Step Aside, Joe” and went on to tell its dozens of readers why this guy has no business running again. Author Eliot Cohen begins by thanking Biden for having rescued the Left from the prospect of four more years of America First torment at the hands of Donald Trump. And it goes downhill from there.

Then there was Biden’s weekend interview with CNN lickspittle Fareed Zakaria, who made the rest of us do a spit-take when he said, straight-faced, “You’ve been a great president,” before getting down to business and suggesting that Old Joe “step aside and let another generation of Democrats take the baton.”

Or take this fourth case of friendly fire on Saturday, in which the New York Times’s own gray lady, Maureen Dowd, with a headline that read “It’s Seven Grandkids, Mr. President,” went directly at Biden’s character — or rather lack thereof. Dowd finished with this shiv to the ribs: “The president’s cold shoulder — and heart — is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it’s out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead.”

Ouch.

What we have here, then, is a coordinated effort from the mainstream media. But notice how none of them are calling for Biden to resign. Instead, they’re all calling for him to serve out his one and only term, and then head off into the sunset.

Why aren’t they calling for his resignation? Why aren’t they talking about his impeachable offenses? Because forcing him out of office before the end of his term would necessarily install Kamala Harris as president — and she’s even less popular than he is. Thus, the game is to deny Harris the presidency and force her to make her way through an open Democrat field.

And, as Victor Davis Hanson has observed, all they need to do to ensure that is for Joe Biden to pull an LBJ — to say he’s had enough, and to walk back his decision to run for president in 2024.

That’s what’s going to happen. It’s only a matter of when.