A favorite Lily Tomlin line was made for this moment: “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.” She could have been talking about the Biden White House. Those of us who were long convinced aides were hiding the president’s cognitive decline weren’t cynical enough. We also needed to believe they were hiding other serious ailments, such as prostate cancer. Hmm, what else didn’t we suspect that we should have? Whatever it is, the odds are soaring we are going to find out. The announcement of his advanced cancer follows the release of the recording of the former president’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur .

Together, they amount to a bombshell of bad news for Biden and his party. The interview, about the stash of classified documents he kept, electrified Washington because it revealed how bumbling and incoherent Biden was back in October 2023, 16 months before he left office, meaning we had a president unfit for duty for at least that long. And to think he was then still seeking re-election and was effectively tied with Donald Trump . Gallup found that 75% of Democrats supported him. They hid it from us His re-election campaign is why the White House and Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to release the recording, even as they released an edited transcript. They knew his meandering mumbles would sink him beyond salvation — so they hid it. You know, to protect democracy. It’s the same reason why they tried to lock up Trump. Thankfully that failed, but the interview and the cancer report are so alarming that the GOP Congress is right to hold hearings about the suspicious autopen signature of Biden’s name on thousands of pardons and commutations. A search for other instances where someone else was likely making key decisions is also warranted. The cascade of these events is so dramatic that major elements of the media’s Biden protection racket are too embarrassed to continue to pretend his was a normal presidency. Apart from the fact that CNN’s Jake Tapper is selling a book about the extent of the cognitive coverup, his admission on Megyn Kelly’s podcast that he was wrong to publicly defend the president’s health and attack critics feels like a watershed moment. No real journalist wants to be in that hot spot, and Tapper wouldn’t be if he had followed the facts instead of his partisan prejudice. His shame should be instructive to a new generation of journalists about the trap of partisanship. Your reputation will be shredded if you turn a blind eye to corruption and deceit.

Indeed, the earlier media cover-up of the Biden family influence-peddling schemes suddenly looks like child’s play compared to their whitewash about the president’s mental and physical fitness. Worst post-presidency After having one of the worst presidencies in history, Biden is now having one of the worst post-presidencies. Just four months out of office, he already seems like a relic from another century. The idea that history will grow kinder to his tenure strikes me as a pipe dream. We’re long past the tired claim that “Old Joe is a good guy who cares about people.” He is a liar, a crook and an imposter. Finally, nobody can deny it. And spare us the sob story that we should be sensitive because of his illness. He could have told the truth at any time, but instead he and the White House made a decision to claim he was healthy until he was kicked out of office and critical books are starting to ­appear. Suddenly, woe is he. Imagine the chutzpah it took for him to run for re-election knowing the extent of his ailments. And the loving, devoted wife? Similarly, the Democrats in Congress who saw nothing amiss —and slimed those who did — will either have to concede they were wrong or suffer the wrath of ­voters. They shouldn’t kid themselves, the party’s sagging approval rating has room to go lower. And it will unless party leaders extract themselves from the grotesque experience of the last four years. Even Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t explain, much less justify, this monstrous level of deception. All this gives the Trump White House and GOP Congress an enormous opportunity to enact their agenda and prove they can govern. With a scattered, defeated opposition and no real leader, the road ahead is clear — if the GOP can get out of its own way.

Passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” on taxes and spending is proving to be a dogfight because of the narrow House majority. If it succeeds, it will be a major achievement for the president’s first year. The tariff issue has faded as an everyday alarm, but the all-clear signal awaits final deals with individual trading partners, China included. The sooner these big issues are put to rest, the sooner the Federal Reserve can be confident inflation is not a threat and begin to lower interest rates. That would lift the economy, boost families and businesses while also reducing the government’s debt costs. As for Biden’s legacy, I believe his goose is cooked, even more so than his predecessors who left under a cloud. Richard Nixon was able to gain some semblance of respect for his policy achievements when emotions had cooled over his disgraceful Watergate exit. Similarly, Ulysses Grant, long considered a terrible president, eventually became widely appreciated for enforcing civil rights in the Old Confederacy after the Civil War and creating the Department of Justice. Even Jimmy Carter, another terrible one-term president, was widely hailed for personal involvement in nonpartisan charities, such as Habitat for Humanity, in his long post-presidency.

Spreading for ‘decade’ None of those is a good precedent for Biden, given that the revelations about the hiding of his cognitive decline now have a match in what was an obvious effort to hide his prostate cancer. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, now or in the future. He simply didn’t want the American public to have information it was entitled to have. With Stage 4 of prostate cancer developing over years, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former member of Biden’s transition team, said on MSNBC that the 82-year-old likely had cancer while he was president. “He’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” Emanuel said. “He did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days.” Even that might have sparked sympathy had Biden been a better, more honest president. But his term was a disaster, with his radical “victores” creating enormous polarization and inflation while wasting trillions of taxpayer dollars. His decision to open the border to more than 10 million illegal immigrants will be a problem for decades. Trump’s efforts to deport violent ones are facing ridiculous obstacles from Democrats and left-leaning judges. Ditto for Biden’s green climate scams and progressive social and racial engineering, all of which Trump is trying to toss in the trash where they belong. That’s Biden’s real legacy.