CNN's Jake Tapper wrote a book that alleges a giant cover-up to protect Joe Biden and prevent the country from learning our 46th president was too weak and too cognitively declined to do his job.

Even before the book was released, journalists accepted the premise as gospel and began second-guessing much of what happened during Biden's four years as president. The proof of Tapper's allegations seemed to lie in Biden's abysmal performance in a debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, when Biden seemed particularly frail. It wasn't so much what he said during the debate. but the way he said it.

From that some have concluded Biden had been too feeble to do his job during his entire time in office, forgetting that three-and-a-half months before the debate, Biden delivered a strong state of the union speech, even winging it when Republican members of the audience protested the president's accusation the GOP wanted to cut Social Security benefits. Biden offered proof, and the Republicans wilted.

Biden was so sharp that evening that Trump and other Republicans said he must have been on drugs. (Funny, but Elon Musk didn't look so sharp at White House meetings when he obviously was on drugs.)

Trump and MAGA-loving media outlets said Biden wasn't calling the shots while he was in office; he was merely a puppet controlled by Barak Obama. That wasn't true, of course, but today one wonders who is writing those executive orders that Trump keeps signing. Trump has made an issue of not using an auto-pen to sign these documents, but I don't think he knows what he is signing. Someone hands him something, he asks what it is and is told, "Blah blah blah," and he proclaims, "Oh that's a big one," and he affixes his signature.

IN VIEW his debate performance, there was no doubt Biden should not have run for re-election, but let's not ignore the fact — and it is a fact — his four years in office were much better for the country than the first four years under Donald Trump, and especially better than what we've had so far in Trump's second administration.

What's particularly amusing are journalists who think we should have noticed Biden's decline earlier, and because of that promise to be alert should something like that ever happen again. News flash: It has been happening ever since Donald Trump was elected a second time.

At his worst, Joe Biden has never been as doolally as Trump is every day. And this was noticeable his first time around, like when, as president, Trump declared we won the Revolutionary War because our army captured all the airports. Imagine if any other president had said something so incredibly stupid.

Neither did Joe Biden ever say our stealth fighter planes were invisible, something Trump has claimed on several occasions.

During his trip to Qatar to make deals for his family business and suggest that a $400 million jumbo jet would be an ideal birthday present, Trump bragged about our military strength, saying we had a submarine capable of remaining under water for 30 years without resurfacing. Yeah, maybe ... if it had a robotic crew. Or does Trump's navy have humans who never age and can survive without food?

AS FAR AS I know, Joe Biden has never been fooled by a Photoshopped picture, as Trump was when he claimed the MI13 superimposed on a photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's hand were actual tattoos. This occurred during an interview with ABC's Terry Moran, who refused to budge when Trump insisted the Photoshopped MI13 were actually tattooed on Garcia's fingers. The most pathetic part of the exchange came when Trump pleaded, "Why don't you just say, 'Yes, he does,' (have those letters and numbers on his hand) and, you know, go on to something else."

A few weeks later Trump claimed a photo of field that displayed more than a thousand crosses was a burial ground for South African white farmers who had been killed in a wave of genocide. Those crosses obviously were symbolic, honoring all murdered farmers, most of them black. The crosses in that photo are long gone and no one is buried in that field. That should have been obvious to anyone who looked at the photo.

Joe Biden never delivered a commencement address in which he advised graduates that having a trophy wife is not a good idea. That seemed to be an important message in Trump's speech at West Point.

AT WAR WITH Harvard University, Trump criticized the school for a remedial math course supposedly required for foreign students. Trump is a fine person to talk about remedial math, since he's the one who claimed egg prices were down 93 percent, then later upped that figure to 98 percent. If you don't know how ridiculous that is, then maybe you should take a remedial math course.

Then there was this exchange Trump had during his interview for a Time magazine article about his first 100 days back in office.