A new gallery of presidents has been unveiled at the White House. The portraits lining the colonnade to the Oval Office are black and white, and there is one obvious exception—instead of a picture of former President Joe Biden, there is an Autopen (automatic signature device) writing his signature.
The “portrait” in question is located between two photos of President Donald Trump, who won the 2016 and 2024 elections. The Republican repeatedly claimed that Biden's mental state was steadily deteriorating and that people around him were making decisions for him.
Biden dismisses these allegations as “ridiculous and untrue,” writes the AP. However, several investigations and hearings before the House of Representatives have shown that they are not so untrue after all.
Presidential executive orders signed without the president's knowledge
During the 2024 election year, Trump claimed that Biden's circle of alleged conspirators had granted preventive amnesties on behalf of the then-president to individuals from the Biden family or his administration. The American media mostly focused on his son Hunter and Covid czar Anthony Fauci.
The non-profit lobby group Power the Future, which advocates for federal government support on behalf of mining companies, published a report back in May claiming that President Biden had “no knowledge” of the energy regulations he had just signed with an autopen. These very same energy lobbyists claim that Biden did not know he had signed six selected climate regulations.
According to legal experts, the use of an Autopen is legal, but the person signing must be aware of the documents being signed. However, what is suspicious are the amnesties for Hunter Biden—who is accused of accepting bribes in the “Ten Percent for the Big Guy” affair—and Fauci, whose agency apparently transferred money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which Covid allegedly escaped.
The head of state as a symbol
Although American representatives are debating who led the “Biden circle” – with the former First Lady Jill Biden's advisor, Anthony Bernal, being mentioned most often – this new decoration of Trump can also be seen as an “insult to the majesty” of the head of state.
Despite all his missteps, gaffes, and radical decisions that harm American interests, Joe Biden was elected and confirmed as president of the United States. His presence thus symbolized the United States itself, and although many Americans would reject this as a “monarchist remnant,” they see the head of the White House in exactly this way.
However, social polarization in the US has reached a stage where, despite declarations about the continuity of state power and its peaceful transfer after legitimate elections, Americans on both sides question the legitimacy of the “other side.” The United States thus risks undermining its own traditions of representative government on the domestic stage.
(sab, ap, tasr)