Nearly six months into the Biden-Harris administration, ordinary Americans are increasingly wondering who is really running the country. 

Joe Biden is ostensibly the president, yet he continues to show signs of cognitive impairment — despite the controlled media insistence that all is well and there is nothing to see here. 

A politician for more than 40 years, Biden is still able to read prepared remarks in front of a teleprompter but appears to have difficulty answering impromptu questions — fumbling ordinary words, forgetting what he's speaking about mid-sentence, sometimes even ceasing to speak altogether. 

After a number of high-profile gaffes, the White House press office recently conceded that Biden's handlers don't want him answering unscripted questions from the media.

Yet now the issue of presidential authority has taken a more ominous turn.

On May 11, a group of 124 retired U.S. military admirals and generals signed a letter questioning Biden's fitness for office and seemingly challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

"Recent Democrat leadership's inquiries about nuclear code procedures send a dangerous national security signal to nuclear armed adversaries, raising the question about who is in charge," the letter said.  "We must always have an unquestionable chain of command."

The letter is referring to a recent call by House Democrats that Biden give up sole control of U.S. nuclear weapons.  In a letter written by Rep. Jimmy Panetta of California, the Democrats demanded that Biden change the command-and-control structure surrounding America's nuclear arsenal so that he no longer has the sole authority to launch weapons.

The retired admirals and generals also questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, a topic that the nation's corporate media have declared off-limits from any public discussion.

The "Constitutional Republic is lost" without "fair and honest elections that accurately reflect the 'will of the people,'" the retired flag officers wrote.  "The FBI and Supreme Court must act swiftly when election irregularities are surfaced and not ignore them as was done in 2020."

The corporate media have declared any questioning of the 2020 election to be a "big lie," a phrase taken from World War II.  The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his autobiography Mein Kampf and is used to mean "a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body." 

Yet Republican leaders have turned the phrase itself against the corporate media, insisting that it is the corporate media, rather than ordinary Americans, that are engaged in overt propaganda.

The recent example they point to is the media narrative of the January 6 "insurrection" by an "armed mob" that "killed police."  After months of investigations, it now turns out that law enforcement did not find a single weapon on any of the protesters; video surveillance footage reveals that most were comically peaceful; and the sole policeman who died at the time was a victim of a stroke, not of any attack as the media repeatedly and falsely reported.  As a result, federal prosecutors are now backtracking on their original claims because proving treason and "insurrection" is looking increasingly impossible.

As for the public at large, polls show that many ordinary Americans continue to question the results of the 2020 election — despite being ordered not to by the corporate media.

According to Rasmussen Reports, "voters are not letting go of their belief that the 2020 presidential election was a fraud-filled nightmare."  By a margin of 51% to 44%, voters said it is "likely" that cheating affected the outcome.  That included 74% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats. 

The corporate media and Democrat politicians claim that cheating rarely happens and that there is no evidence of "widespread" voter fraud.  Yet due to the "winner take all" Electoral College voting system, "widespread" cheating would not have been necessary. 

As journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes claim in their new book, Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, Biden only won the election with a slim cumulative margin of about 50,000 votes in four key swing states.

In addition, a month after the election, Time Magazine published an article that described how a "well-funded cabal" of corporate elites, far-left activists, and media organizations launched what the magazine called a "conspiracy to save the 2020 election" and ensure that Trump would lose his re-election bid.   

According to the article, this powerful group of corporate and media elites succeeded by "working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."

The recent letter from 124 retired U.S. military admirals and generals shows that doubts about a corporate takeover of the American government persist, despite the U.S. media's insistence that even questioning the results of the election is somehow illegal and should be banned outright as "misinformation." 

At the very least, polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the tactics Democrats used to win — such as mass use of mail-in ballots and, in some states, no ID required to vote — should be outlawed, as they are in almost all other developed nations.

According to Rasmussen, most voters say it's "more important to prevent cheating in elections than to make it easier to vote and, by more than a two-to-one margin, they reject claims that voter ID laws are discriminatory."

Robert J. Hutchinson writes about the intersection of politics and ideas.  He is the author of What Really Happened: The Lincoln Assassination.

Image via Picryl.

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