Twitter and the media (but I repeat myself) threw a fit the other day when President Trump said this to Laura Ingraham. Here’s the headline from Mediaite:
Trump’s Conspiracy That Biden Is ‘Controlled by Men in Dark Shadows’ Brutally Mocked on Twitter: ‘Is This Dude OK?’
This because Trump had the nerve – the nerve! – to answer Laura’s question about who he thinks is controlling Joe Biden behind the scenes. Said Trump:
“People you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows…”
And on cue, the Twitterites freaked out.
Let me ask a question here. How many of those Twitterers know who Joe Tumulty is? How about Cary Grayson? Or Edith Bolling Galt Wilson?
Hmmm. Seeing no Twitter hands going up I will tell you who these people in the – er – dark shadows were.
They were, successively, the private secretary, personal physician and wife of…..President Woodrow Wilson. The story is this.
In 1919, newly returned from Paris where he had negotiated the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, Wilson went on a national train trip to campaign for support of the League of Nations. Wilson had come up with the idea for the League and it was included in the treaty – and the treaty had to be ratified by the Republican-controlled U.S.Senate.
Suffice to say the League was unpopular with a number of Republican Senators – they believed it was a threat to US national sovereignty. So before the treaty could be voted on, Wilson determined to take his train trip across the country, giving speeches at repeated stops along the way to rally support for the League.
Alas, just outside Pueblo, Colorado something went wrong – big time. Wilson suffered what is called a transient ischemic attack – a warning that a stroke was on the way. Tumulty, Grayson and Mrs. Wilson quickly determined Wilson was in no shape to continue. They crafted a statement that was issued saying the President was suffering from “nervous exhaustion”, that his condition was “not alarming” but it required his immediate return to Washington. Four days later, back in the White House, Edith Wilson got up that morning to find her husband lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, his face and head covered in blood. Quickly summoning Dr. Grayson, the two managed to lift the President to his bed – and realized instantly he was completely paralyzed on his left side.
What to do? Inform the Vice President and the Cabinet. The Cabinet requested a statement from Dr. Grayson and Tumulty informing them officially that the President had become disabled – the Constitution providing his powers could be transferred to the Vice President. Tumulty brusquely rejected the request, saying this:
“You may rest assured that while Woodrow Wilson is lying in the White House on the broad of his back I will not be party to ousting him. He has been too kind, too loyal … to receive such treatment at my hands. And I am sure that Doctor Grayson will never certify to his disability.”
And with that, Wilson biographer August Heckscher writes:
“Thus began, with the silent assent of some, with the active maneuvering of others, such a cover-up as American history had not known before.”
Which is to say, three people and three people alone – the President’s wife, his doctor and private secretary – all in the “dark shadows” of the Wilson Administration – controlled access to the President. And on Grayson’s advice – Mrs. Wilson made the major presidential decisions that were coming in to her husband. “Everything,” the good doctor said to the anxious and protective wife, must come to her instead of the stricken President because “every time you take him a new anxiety or problem … you are turning a knife in an open wound.”
This secretive cover-up of the President’s real condition continued for the remaining year-plus of Wilson’s presidency, his slow, gradual recovering being enough to give those outside the circle of three the illusion he was in control.
Thus, three people in the “dark shadows” were really running a president.
Without mentioning Wilson’s story, that is exactly what President Trump is talking about when he told Laura that “People you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows” would be running the Biden presidency behind the scenes.
Only Monday in Pittsburgh, newly out of his basement, the 77-year old Biden stumbled through his teleprompter speech, saying this:
“COVID has taken this year — just since the outbreak — has taken 100 year. Look, here’s…the lives…it’s just…I mean, think about it. More lives this year than any other year for the past 100 years.”
This is the umpteenth example of the 77-year old Biden’s shaky – very shaky – mental prowess.
As if that weren’t bad enough, turning to the energy issue, Biden vowed that he had never said he would ban fracking – which Fox quickly refuted with numerous clips of Biden saying exactly that he would indeed ban fracking. To be charitable, either he was deliberately lying and thought no one would notice – or, infinitely worse, he simply had no recollection that he was on the record repeatedly saying he would in fact ban fracking.
It takes no imagination to believe that exactly like the Woodrow Wilson episode, those closest to a President Biden would, like Wilson’s wife, secretary and doctor, be the shadowy figures actually running the Biden presidency behind the scenes.
With the American people left completely in the dark.
Not good.
And you’re welcome for the history lesson, Twitter.
