The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, May 19, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:04 It's Monday, May 19, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, one thing's for certain it is going to be a very interesting week in the United States, and in particular in American politics. And in this case, many of the week's headlines are likely not to be dominated by the current president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, but by his predecessor in office, President Joe Biden. and the big headlines are going to have to do with what at least some major journalists are calling was nothing less than a cover-up in terms of the president's intellectual ability and mental acuity when it came to his years in the White House. And of course, it was in the course of the 2004 presidential election and in an absolutely disastrous presidential debate that many Americans saw what they had already seen, but they saw it in such a devastating way that eventually President Biden had to withdraw from the

Starting point is 00:01:01 race. And he did so even after the Republican National Convention in such a way that when Kamala Harris became the standard bearer of the party, having served as Biden's vice president, the fact is that in retrospect her candidacy was probably doomed from the start. The big question is who is to blame, and those around Kamala Harris clearly blame Joe Biden, those around Joe Biden, and that appears to include Joe Biden himself, blame Kamala Harris. Or at least they say that if Biden had been at the top of the ticket, he believes he could have won. I think in the view of most Americans, that assumption is pretty much insane, but the former president is sticking to his argument, and he did so even in recent days when appearing on the news program, The View. The Financial Times is one of the most

Starting point is 00:01:47 authoritative and influential newspapers in Europe, and that paper has responded to this controversy by pointing to the former president's appearance on the view and describing the president as, quote, struggling to say that, quote, his claims of cognitive lapses were wrong, and then the paper ads before wandering off the topic. And then these words, quote, his wife, Jill, quickly intervened, end quote. Well, whether the Biden's realized it or not, in so doing, that is to say, with the president saying he was not cognitively impaired and then demonstrating cognitive impairment, and then his wife interrupting, saying more or less, we're going to move on, the financial times just makes clear, they have played right into the script of their critics who have been saying that the former

Starting point is 00:02:34 president did indeed get deeper and deeper into a process of cognitive decline and that he denied it, and perhaps even more energetically, his wife denied it. They played right into the script specifically of a book to be released tomorrow entitled Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again. The book written by CNN's Jake Tapper and his co-op, author, Axios reporter Alex Thompson, as the Financial Times says, quote, alleges that his team, meaning Biden's team, deliberately concealed the president's decline, end quote. Now, in worldview terms, there's some big issues to consider here. For one thing, it is simply astounding, you would think, that in the year 2025, we could be talking about something like this

Starting point is 00:03:20 in recent American history. In the digital age, with constant news, with every public appearance of the president, susceptible to minors. new investigation, how is it that something like this could have happened? And you'll notice the Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson book makes a very bold accusation. They use the term cover up in the title of the book. Now, you might say on the one hand, well, that's probably a very good way to sell books and to get attention, and no doubt that's true. But these are journalists and they have to back it up with something, and they back it up with a great deal of investigative reporting, including hundreds of interviews with persons who had inside knowledge.

Starting point is 00:03:58 And they make the very explicit accusation that members of President Biden's inner team had conspired to conceal from the public what they all knew, and frankly knew increasingly with virtually every passing day. And that was that President Biden was struggling with very deep cognitive decline. I go back to the fact that it is seemingly inconceivable that people would believe that there could be such a cover-up that would be effective at this point in American history, with the technology, with a constant media coverage and all the rest. And then with the political stakes involved,

Starting point is 00:04:32 we're talking about the most powerful elective office in the world, arguably the most powerful political office in the world. You could even argue that in real terms, it is the most powerful political office that has ever existed in terms of human political scale. But looking at this, the fact is that to the humiliation of the entire nation, clearly this did take place. Now, when you look at this, you recognize that you have to talk

Starting point is 00:04:57 by the American people on the one hand, did the American people think that Joe Biden was suffering cognitive decline? The fact is that polls were indicating a clear majority of Americans and believed that for a very long time, long before the president announced that he was going to be running for re-election, certainly long before he withdrew from the race after the disastrous debate. But we also see that the American people basically did allow the disaster to happen. And in putting it on the American people in these terms, I'm not a lot of the American people. I'm not go back to 2004, not even to 2023 or 22 or 21. We have to go back to the year 2020. Most importantly, it was in the year 2020 that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States.

Starting point is 00:05:41 And the point I want to make is that there was ample evidence then that this was a very aged man, aged in more ways than one. It's not just a matter of chronological age. It has to do with one's actual functional age. And in that sense, it became very clear in the context of the 2000. 2020 campaign that Joe Biden wasn't even the Joe Biden of before. Now, at this point, a very interesting argument has appeared in recent days by Barton Swam, one of the opinion writers at the Wall Street Journal. And he says, well, let me just quote him here, quote, the argument in the press about when it became clear that Mr. Biden wasn't up to the job,

Starting point is 00:06:18 was it 2003? As early as 2021, also makes me laugh. Swam writes, quote, I witnessed Mr. Biden's frailty during the 2020 primary and wrote about it, end quote. Well, the article comes with a link. You can go look at the article that, indeed, Barton Swain wrote back in 2020. Indeed, it was published in the Wall Street Journal on February the 27th of 2020. And with pretty clear descriptive language, Barton Swame says it was evident then. And he's making the argument then that the then-presidential candidate and former vice president, eventual Democratic nominee, was mentally impaired.

Starting point is 00:06:57 and frankly, worn out. Writing about a campaign event in South Carolina in 2020, Barton Swain wrote, quote, that night he, meaning Biden, spoke at a rally at the College of Charleston and appeared to get himself through it by force of will. His campaign had set up a teleprompter, unusual for a routine stump speech, but Mr. Biden chose not to use it. Instead, he hobbled around the stage, stiff-need. He ran his sentences together and shouted his remarks at an unnaturally high pitch without pausing for applause. Here's the deal he kept bellowing as if someone were interrupting him. End quote. Within a fairly short amount of time, Joe Biden was then elected president of the United States in November of 2020. Shortly thereafter, it became very clear to the American people that

Starting point is 00:07:42 something was wrong. And by the way, one of the cues in all of this was the former president's constant statement, here's the deal. It's very interesting that Barton Swain even identified that phrase back in 2020. It would certainly seem that the big question right now is how the Democratic Party allowed this to happen. How did the most important leaders in the Democratic Party who had to know what they were dealing with, how did they let this happen? And the obvious bottom line in all of that offered by the new book and also by a great deal of the conversation right now in the national media, even in the political class, the obvious answer is the Democrats thought it was the only way they could win, the only way they could defeat Donald Trump for election to what would then have been a second

Starting point is 00:08:28 term in the 2020 election. And there were also maneuvers behind the scenes to get other major Democratic candidates to back out believing that Joe Biden had the best chance of building a presidential base state by state in the electoral college that might lead to a win. And of course, the fact is that he did win. But looking back at Biden's win in 2020, there's one big factor that comes into very clear focus. And that is that under the conditions of the COVID pandemic, the reality is that President Biden, then Vice President Biden, running for the presidency, he really didn't appear much in public that wasn't a traditional presidential campaign. And that's because he ran most of his campaign from the basement of his house in Delaware.

Starting point is 00:09:14 And so the American people really didn't have the exposure that would normally have been the case with a major party candidate, certainly a major party nominee, running in the general election as the presidential candidate. And you look at the situation in 2004, and you had just have to scratch your head and wonder again, how did the leadership and the Democratic Party allow that train wreck to happen? They had to know the situation related to the president. They had to know of his mental decline. That mental decline, of course, became nothing less than at least politically catastrophic. And we can only be thankful for what we know that it didn't lead to any kind of national security disaster or some kind of internal

Starting point is 00:09:55 crisis. But there are huge questions, especially related to the term cover-up. Who was behind the cover-up? Who was doing the covering? And in this case, it really comes down to two central categories. And that has to do with those who are the very close political associates of the former president, and then members of his own family. And so some of the closest aides to the president, the fact is that we now know, documented in this book and in other books that are forthcoming, very clear investigative reports. It is abundantly clear that they were trying to compensate for the president's weaknesses by even scheduling his day and disallowing much activity to preserve the president for the very few public appearances he had and then trying to limit the damage in those.

Starting point is 00:10:40 It was also rumored that they were considering whether or not the former president then the president of the United States would require routinely a wheelchair just to be able to get about. Tapper and Thompson make the argument that the Democrats indicated that they didn't want to move to that stage until after the election. I guess the reason for that would be obvious, but the moral impulse behind that also becomes obvious. The fact that there really was some kind of conspiracy or cover-up becomes obvious. It is also obvious, there's no other word for it, that the former first lady, Jill Biden, was actively involved in this. As a matter of fact, you look at some of the media appearances, particularly where the president and the then-first lady appeared together, it's really clear that

Starting point is 00:11:25 she was trying to block and she was trying basically to limit the damage. She was trying to control some interviews, and that came down even to the appearance just days ago on the view. Well, all right, let's think about the larger political background here, and I can think of at least two presidents for which this would be some kind of related issue. The first of them was Woodrow Wilson, And when you look at Woodrow Wilson and the last couple of years of his presidency, it became very clear that he was physically impaired by what's been described as a massive stroke and perhaps even a series of strokes. The president's impaired health was clear to his closest advisors. But once again, there is evidence that those advisors covered for him. And there is, of course, and this has been around for decades now, you could say soon, almost a century now.

Starting point is 00:12:11 there were those who were making the accusation that the president's second wife was operating basically as president in some cases, making decisions and probably signing documents because it became clear to others that President Wilson was in no mental or physical condition to do either. It is important to note that at least major Democratic figures made clear to President Wilson or to the Wilson's that there would not be party support for him to run for what would then have been a third term. The Democratic went on to lose that election. Warren Harding won that election. And then you had to fast forward to the second situation that certainly comes to mind here, and that is the presidency of Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he was already 69 years old. And he was the oldest

Starting point is 00:12:59 person elected president of the United States. Remember that Ronald Reagan served two terms, quite effectively, and by the time he finished his second term, he was 77 years old. Now, the interesting thing is that at that point, there is very little speculation about any kind of problem with mental acuity or intellectual ability, cognitive status, when it came to President Reagan. In retrospect, there were some halting moments, and it was clear that the president who had seemed to defy age for so long was succumbing, at least in some part, to the inevitable. Ronald Reagan at 77 did not look like Ronald Reagan at age 69. That's largely explicable simply by the realities of the presidency. As with any president, President Reagan was surrounded by a very loyal inner circle of advisors. But as when I mentioned President Biden in the modern age, there was so much media coverage. If there had been any real question about a loss of cognitive ability, there's no way the press would have covered that up. But we could say, on the other hand, there was a generalized concern that the presidency of Ronald Reagan for those eight years, and again he began at 69, ended at 77, that was considered then to be something likely as unusual, not to be repeated again. And then, of course, the landscape was also changed in August

Starting point is 00:14:20 of 1994, six years after leaving office, when famously President Reagan wrote an open letter to the nation announcing basically that he was withdrawing from public life because, he had received the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. It is a horrifying disease. It is a very powerful enemy. And President Reagan, shortly after acknowledging the diagnosis, began to show the signs of falling into deeper stages, moving into deeper stages of Alzheimer's disease. By the time he died, it was very clear that he had been in severe cognitive decline for those final years. But at that point, he was a former president. He was not president of the United States. He was not running for re-election in 1988. He was retiring from public life. And so the period between

Starting point is 00:15:09 1988 to 1994 was a period in which the former president was still very much a public figure. But those around him began to say, it is very clear that he's suffering from some kind of cognitive decline. Then, rather shortly thereafter, came the announcement from the former president of the diagnosis. Now, it is simply scary to imagine what would have happened in the context of the Cold War in particular, if Ronald Reagan had actually suffered from cognitive decline during the time he was in the White House. But we're talking about a situation that might well have been the reality in the Joe Biden administration of the four years between 2021 and January of 2025. We also have to note that the current president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is now 78 years old.

Starting point is 00:15:56 Just a matter of weeks from now, he'll be 79 years old. By the time he finishes his the second term, he too would be 82 years old, and that's old. There are those wondering right now, and this includes political scientists, academic types, as well as political types, who are wondering if the presidency, but it's not just the presidency, American politics is turning into something like a geriatric ward. There are those in the Democratic Party right now who feel like the situation is so acute they need to intervene. And so you've got to fight inside the Democratic Party's leadership right now about what to do with really aged sense. senators and others in Congress who younger Democrats are saying are holding them back, holding the

Starting point is 00:16:36 party back from success and making the party more vulnerable. And yet the oldest United States Senator at present is Charles Grassley, Republican Senator of the state of Iowa. He is currently the oldest serving United States Senator. He, by the way, is 91 years old, and he's headed towards being 92 within just a matter of months. All that to say, we are in a strange season of American politics. And Christians understand that biblically, there's a certain respect that is due to age. In the Old Testament, as in the New Testament, even with the use of a term like elders, it is clear that there is a special respect, a special honor that is due to older leaders. It's certainly not an accident that in many cultures, senior leaders in politics and in culture often referred to as

Starting point is 00:17:23 the elders of the community. So it's not just a term that is used inside the church in terms of biblical ecclesiology. But we also know that when it comes to age, the scripture is very clear about the effects of aging. When it comes to someone like Moses, by the time he dies, it has pointed out that he's very, very old, but his vigor was unabated. His eyesight was undemmed. But that's a statement that makes sense only because it was remarkable that at that age, his vision was undemmed and his vigor was unabated. The implication here is that the normal human being, at past age is not so clear of sight and perhaps not so clear of mind. And if it's not a lack of clarity, it's also just a different life stage. And so there is one problem, and that's made very

Starting point is 00:18:11 clear in some of the internal debates among the Democrats right now, how in the world can someone in their eighth or ninth decade of life really have much of a clue about what politics and what arguments are going to work when it comes to younger voters, which after all are the future of the party if the party is to have a future. Frankly, it's going to be very interesting to see how American voters respond to the issue of age moving forward. And one thing's for certain. Those who are resisting retirement looking at that kind of advanced age, they're not going to be able to resist it forever. Some realities just honestly aren't up for a vote. I want to repeat, the biblical worldview gives respect and honor to those who have earned it by age. but there's also a sense in which it is responsible that there be a handoff from generation to generation

Starting point is 00:19:00 or that age hasn't demonstrated much wisdom. We see that in the Apostle Paul. We see that in his exhortations, for instance, to Timothy, also his relationship with Titus. It becomes very clear that the passing on of the faith intact. That faith, once for all, delivered to the saints, means for Christians we understand all this with a much higher sense of urgency and priority. But all this is in conversation right now because of the political context of the big question as to who knew what when and did what when, knowing what, when it comes to the four years in office of President Joe Biden.

Starting point is 00:19:38 It is not a pretty picture. And it's also really interesting in worldview analysis that you see so many of the people who are now coming out in public making these statements, they're the people who, to one extent, or another, also should have known. I mean, we're talking about major media figures here who had a lot of access to the president, and they certainly knew something. But of course, right now, the question is, who's going to take the fall for all of this? And it is very interesting to see a series of articles

Starting point is 00:20:06 and arguments, for instance, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other papers, where you see Democrats trying to say, there is one person responsible for this, and that one person is Joe Biden. But Joe Biden didn't make himself president of the United States. He didn't make himself the Democratic Party nominee, nor did his wife for that matter. They're certainly part of the equation, but that was a process undertaken by the Democratic Party, and it was a decision actually made by voters in 2020. No doubt this is going to be the subject matter for a lot of public debate and probably for a good series of best-selling books. But for Christians, it raises a host of deeper issues that are far larger than an election and ultimately even larger than the presidency.

Starting point is 00:20:50 Finally for today, a great deal of reporting and a lot of public speculation about the meaning of President Trump's recent state visit to the Middle East, he went to Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, and to the United Arab Emirates, and he made news everywhere he went. In the big picture, a part of the news is that Israel was not really a part of the Middle Eastern equation at this time. So there are people asking, Is this a breach between the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Was it an insult to the Israelis? I would offer there's at least another way to see this, and that is that one of the successes of this particular diplomatic venture by the President of the United States is that Israel wasn't front and center in terms of the argument.

Starting point is 00:21:34 That's a certain achievement in its own sense. But it's also clear that the president bringing his transactional approach to politics, he took that transactional approach. to international relations, and in particular in the Arab world or in the larger Muslim world. And so, for instance, when he went to Saudi Arabia, he was very public in his appreciation for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was received at the Royal Palace on an official state visit, and he announced billions of dollars in business arrangements between the United States and Saudi Arabia. He took a similar effort and spirit to Qatar, and then he went to the United Arab Emirates. really interesting in the context of all that, and in worldview terms, probably the biggest single

Starting point is 00:22:17 issue to come out of that state visit was the announcement by the president that the administration would move to drop all restrictions and trade barriers on the nation of Syria. Now, just a year ago, that would have been unthinkable, and Syria would have been at or near the top of the nations considered most dangerous to the United States by our national security apparatus, and Syria was seen to be a source of terrorism, a known sponsor of state terror. All of that was concentrated in the repression and the terror undertaken by the Assad regime, both father and son. And interestingly, that regime was toppled in the insurrection there in Syria by a coalition that led by a former member of al-Qaeda, Nahmed al-Shara. And it was specifically speaking to

Starting point is 00:23:06 that man that Donald Trump said that he wanted the people of Syria to be afforded the opportunity to do something great. One of the big worldview issues involved in this is that President Trump has clearly moved to a situation, a reading of the world in which he wants to deal with nations as they are, with political challenges as they are, and seek the best situation possible under present conditions. He's very much opposed to idealism when it comes to looking at a regime such as this very new regime in Syria, but he also seems to want to help something good happen in a region of the world where very little good has happened for a very long time. As we think about the terms of realism here, it seems that President Trump also understands that there is no clear alternative at the present

Starting point is 00:23:54 to this particular man in his leadership in Syria. And if you want the best things to happen for the Syrian people and for the neighbors of Syria, and that includes some of our closest friends, including Israel, then you have to hope for stability to emerge there, and the president is putting the United States on the record, on the side of at least not wanting to undermine that stability, and if possible, hoping to build it. That became an example that caught the attention of the New York Times, and the Times openly asked if, when it comes to foreign policy, President Trump's more forgiving to foreign adversaries than to his adversaries here in the United States. it does indicate a different context, and it indicates that President Trump is deliberately attempting

Starting point is 00:24:38 to chart out here a different trajectory for American foreign policy than previous administrations. I found it very interesting that Philip Gordon, who is national security advisor to then-vice President Kamah Harris, offered a piece that ran prominently in the Financial Times of London entitled Democrats can learn from Trump's Gulf visit. and what Gordon was saying, at least in part, is that Trump wasn't following the script to previous administrations and was open to new ideas. It is interesting to see someone who was national security advisor to President Trump's opponent in the 2024 election saying, you know, maybe Democrats can learn from that. Of course, we also need to understand that a similar statement might need to be made about the president's own party.

Starting point is 00:25:23 It is certainly not clear that everyone on the Republican side is on board with President Trump's new approach. But to state the obvious, President Trump is president of the United States, and one of the authorities invested in the presidency is the power of directing America's international relations and foreign policy. One of the very interesting questions in moral terms we're all going to have to consider, not only when it comes to international relations, but domestic issues as well, is whether it's a forced choice between having ideals and accepting some form of idealism. Any way you look at it, President Trump indicated, that in American foreign policy, there's a new game book.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to Twitter.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information, on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsklee. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Geneva, Switzerland, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing. Thank you.

The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, May 19, 2025

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