In a stunning moment of political theater—and what some are calling a quiet admission of guilt—Democrats largely boycotted a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into the alleged cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline, leaving Republicans to lead a damning public inquest nearly alone.
Only two Democrats—Senators Dick Durbin (IL) and Peter Welch (VT)—bothered to show up to the hearing, titled “Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Coverup Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution.” Their sparse presence didn’t go unnoticed.
Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who co-led the hearing, slammed the no-show Democrats and said their absence spoke louder than any defense they might have offered. “We’re left with no other option than to take the boycott of this hearing as an admission of guilt,” Cornyn declared. “We need to know who was actually in charge of the United States these last four years.”
Cornyn didn’t mince words, describing what he sees as a sweeping conspiracy to deceive the American public. He played video clips of Biden’s many incoherent statements and stumbling public appearances—including from his now-infamous debate performance that ended his re-election campaign. According to Cornyn, “There was a coordinated effort—from family, staff, and the press—to hide Biden’s decline and keep him in power out of fear of Donald Trump.”
Durbin, for his part, used his time at the hearing not to defend Biden directly but to attack Trump instead. He played a cherry-picked and heavily edited video of Trump in an apparent attempt to portray the 45th president as mentally unfit. Conservative watchdogs like the Media Research Center blasted the clip, calling it a desperate and “pathetic” attempt to deflect from Biden’s obvious decline.
Welch took a different approach—he walked out. According to Politico, the Vermont senator said the hearing was of “no benefit” to his constituents before making his early exit.
The hearing was convened in the wake of the bombshell revelations contained in CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson’s book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Coverup, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” According to the book, Biden’s team misled the press, senior cabinet officials, and the American people for years. Tapper himself alleged that the White House was lying about “how bad” Biden’s cognitive issues had become.
Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld and others have pointed out the absurdity of calling it a “cover-up” when Biden’s deterioration was on full display every time he stood at a podium. But for Cornyn and other Republicans, the bigger issue is who was pulling the strings behind the scenes—and why Americans were systematically misled.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who co-chaired the hearing, emphasized the constitutional stakes. “This wasn’t just about politics. It was about whether the president of the United States was capable of doing the job. If not, someone else was—and we deserve to know who that was.”
Though the mainstream media has largely dismissed the hearing as a partisan stunt, the gravity of the issue isn’t lost on voters. Biden is now retired, reportedly spending quiet days on the beach in Delaware while Vice President Kamala Harris appears aimless in California.
The hearing may not have answered every question about the Biden White House, but it made one thing clear: those who had the most to answer for didn’t even bother to show up.