Biden’s ugly debate performance sparks full-fledged Dem civil war — get your popcorn

President Joe Biden attends the first presidential debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., June 27, 2024. REUTERS

Get your popcorn and grab a seat.

The hottest political show of the moment is one Americans haven’t seen for decades: Democrats behaving like Republicans.

Suddenly, members of the party with a recent habit of sticking together are engaged in a circular firing squad.

The insults, name-calling and nasty exchanges echo the way the GOP has squandered its House majority.

The Dem civil war involves even bigger stakes, of course, because it was sparked by President Biden’s debate debacle.

It was so bad that lawmakers and donors are growing increasingly bold in publicly demanding that Biden withdraw from the race.

What to know about the fallout from President Biden's debate performance:

• President Biden’s poor performance in the first 2024 presidential debate has left even some Democrats unsure of his fitness for office and future as the party’s candidate.
• Former President Obama admitted that Biden had a “bad” debate, while his rival former President Trump suggested that he was in a “trance” and “choked.”
• Biden told a crowd at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate that he doesn’t “debate as well as I used to” — but insisted that he can still “do this job.”
• The New York Times editorial board called on the president to serve the country by dropping out of the race. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a similar editorial a day later.
• Biden gathered with his family to assess the campaign’s future at Camp David, with his son Hunter reportedly pushing for him to stay in the race. Family members questioned if the president’s top advisors should be fired after the disastrous debate.
• Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein revealed that sources close to Biden have witnessed as many as 20 episodes of cognitive decline in the past year.
• Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) became the first House Democrat to call on Biden to drop out.

In an arrogant response, the campaign blasted the “bedwetting brigade” and told complainers to get back in line if they want to beat Donald Trump.

Alas, the order to shut up isn’t working, as even some of the party’s most reliable handmaidens are abandoning ship.

CNN’s Jake Tapper, usually a full-time Trump basher, accused the White House and Biden campaign of using Orwellian tactics to silence dissent.

“There is a pattern, discernible pattern, of Democratic officials seemingly trying to convince you, the public, to not believe what you saw and what you heard with your eyes and with your ears on Thursday night,” he said of the debate he helped to moderate.

Gibberish Joe

As the whole world knows, the showdown was dominated by Biden’s stunning brain freezes and gibberish, as in “we finally beat Medicare.”

His false claim that no soldiers were killed on his watch shocked grieving Gold Star families, with at least 16 soldiers killed by hostile action in the last three years.

The face-off, which Biden demanded as a way to lift his sagging poll numbers, was a political earthquake, and its aftershocks are reshaping the presidential race.

My prediction is that the president will follow the path a politically wounded LBJ took in 1968 and drop out within a month.

• Watch Biden’s worst moments during the presidential debate
• Who could replace Joe Biden after disastrous presidential debate?
• Democrats panicked at Biden’s debate debacle — and aren’t fooling anyone as they now pretend everything’s fine
• Trump inches ahead of Biden nationally after prez’s disastrous debate: new poll
• Biden campaign working overtime to ‘minimize’ concern after disastrous debate, hold hastily arranged DNC call
• Biden admits, ‘I know I’m not a young man in new battleground state ad after debate disaster

Meanwhile, Biden’s closet of secrets is spilling open and the public is finally getting some insights into the extent of his cognitive decline.

The emerging profile is that he’s a part-time president whose work schedule is lighter than that of your average civil servant.

The commander-in-chief is only “dependably engaged” for about six hours a day, insiders told Axios.

They said that outside a window of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., he’s more likely to get tongue tied and exhausted.

Nice work if you can get it.

As Axios noted, most of the president’s public events are scheduled for those hours, meaning his handlers created a Potemkin village of a fully functioning president.

Health info a secret

Politico separately reports that Biden has become more difficult to deal with in routine matters, and that briefings are constructed to please him and avoid his tantrums.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’ ” a source identified only as a senior administration official reportedly said.

It added that Biden refuses to take advice from anyone outside a small inner circle and is becoming increasingly isolated.

Although it’s a welcome development that members of the staff are coming clean, Biden’s true medical condition remains a secret.

How about China, Russia and Iran — do they know the roster of his ailments?

Does their knowledge explain their aggression and confidence that America itself is in decline?

Then there’s the Washington press corps.

Where has it been?

If there’s a Pulitzer Prize for the best coverup of government corruption, the Washington media bigs should share it.

They have meekly surrendered to the fact that Biden has done far fewer news conferences and interviews than recent presidents.

A little curiosity about why and some digging might have revealed what we’re now learning about his condition.

But that would have benefited Trump, so the curiosity and shovels stayed in the closet.

Worse, the media became a megaphone for White House disinformation.

When the ever-hapless press secretary recently declared that videos of the president stumbling and mumbling were “cheap fakes,” many outlets instantly repeated her lie as a fact.

That makes the press corps the real lying, dog-faced pony soldiers Biden once strangely referenced.

Keeping him hidden was key to preserving the illusion that he is good to go for a second term, according to Carl Bernstein.

Although he suffers from a rabid case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, the former Watergate reporter told CNN that the ugly debate scene was not unique.

Complicity in coverup

“There have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed,” Bernstein said his sources tell him.

Historic media coverups of Oval Office secrets, such as the fact that FDR needed crutches and that JFK was a serial seducer, are often explained away as relics of bygone eras.

But there’s no excuse for this one, which is arguably the most dangerous coverup of all.

Correction — there is one excuse. Trump.

The truth could make him president again, so it had to be hidden.

Falling public trust in the media has merit.

Biden himself, in a mark of his desperation, revealed another secret Monday.

Wearing excessive bronze makeup to compensate for the ghostly pallor he fashioned at the debate, he denounced the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

The ruling likely will postpone the federal trial of Trump on charges related to Jan. 6, leading Biden to demand a trial before the ­election.

“The public has a right to know the answer about what happened on January 6th before they ask to vote again this year,” he said.

His demand, which he read off a teleprompter, could have been aimed at the Washington, DC, judge handling the case.

Tanya Chutkan was nominated to the bench when Biden was vice president under Barack Obama and has tilted toward prosecutors in the case so far.

Real threat to democracy

Still, Biden’s comments are a reminder that he was no bystander in the case, or any of the others brought against Trump by Dem prosecutors.

In April 2022, The New York Times reported that Biden told aides he was frustrated that Attorney General Merrick Garland had not prosecuted his predecessor — and future opponent — on the Capitol riot.

Within months, Garland appointed a special prosecutor, who obtained two federal indictments against Trump, including the one most affected by the Supreme Court ruling.

And now Biden is furious, with the cases in jeopardy and his weaponization of the courts against his opponent collapsing.

Even the delay in the planned sentencing of Trump in the Manhattan show trial raises the chances that case will be overturned on appeal.

The significance of these developments cannot be overstated.

The Dems’ claim that Trump is a threat to democracy was always a fig leaf to hide that they were the ones playing by banana republic rules.

And now the sordid conspiracy appears to be unraveling.

Good riddance to it and, hopefully, to the president who authorized it.