The rightwing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden is a virtual stand-in for behind-the-scenes Democrats who wield the real power is a persistent one.
Former President Donald Trump and others have trafficked in the assertion that former President Barack Obama, whom Biden served as Vice President for eight years, is the Oz behind the curtain. Others, like former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, have suggested Hillary Clinton exerts undue influence over Biden’s White House.
Below, Gabbard, a former Democrat who has been mentioned as a potential Vice President in a second Trump administration, tells Tucker Carlson that “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not in office right now but they still continue to wield immense power.”
With the conspiracy theory as his core premise, Carlson then asks Gabbard: “Who is running the government?” adding “at this point it’s obviously not Joe Biden. You think Hillary Clinton?”
“It’s not a leap of imagination to know that’s true,” Gabbard replies, citing personnel crossover between the Biden administration’s staff and people who were the “right hands for the Obama administration and for Hillary Clinton.”
Feeling pretty vindicated in all the comments I’ve made about Tulsi being a GOP plant over the years.
Here she is peddling the conspiracy theory that Obama and Hillary Clinton are running the government.
This has been going on since WAY before she left the Democratic Party. pic.twitter.com/znQuhuaePY
— Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) March 27, 2024
Biden’s close professional relationship with Obama and his longstanding relationship with both Bill and Hillary Clinton — all of them, as Gabbard says, wielding influence on the left — have provided fodder the conspiracy-minded to imagine that Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, is merely a figurehead for the real powers that be.
Yet to be effective, the conspiracy relies heavily on an image of Biden as non-autonomous, passive and easily manipulated — that is, as a politician who no longer possesses the energy or “mental acuity” to manage the nuts and bolts of the job.
That narrative suffered a dent — albeit only temporary, as Gabbard shows — after Biden’s so-called “feisty” State of the Union address earlier this month, as MAGA Republicans scrambled to rework their criticism of the President from a docile, out-of-it, “sleepy” Joe — as Donald Trump has called him — to a threat they characterized as overly “aggressive” and “amped up.”
The SOTU performance — whether its content was viewed positively or negatively — did effectively push back against the GOP-drawn perception of Biden as a doddering sieve through which unelected Democratic forces like Clinton and Obama simply sifted their agendas. Whoever possesses influence behind the curtain, no one could say that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had given the speech.