It was a little pathetic to watch Joe Biden on stage last night mumble so incoherently that nobody could doubt he’s simply a figurehead for leader of the free world. It raises the thought: While he’s been presented as president for three and a half years, who has really been executing the powers and duties of the office?

While Donald Trump’s performance showed him in full command of his will and voice, his own four years in office also pointed in a similar direction. It wasn’t because he was merely a prop for president, like Joe Biden. It was because Trump’s insistence that he energetically carry out the mandate voters gave him conflicted very visibly with the belief among many in the federal government that, at this point, all presidents are props — even the ones who have full command of their faculties.

Montana radio host Aaron Flint pointed out that replacing Biden with another Democrat will still leave in power the people currently using him like a presidential skin suit. That’s also true, to a large extent, of replacing Biden with Trump.

Now, there is indeed a serious difference between a president with dementia and a president without. Certainly nobody could use Trump like a skin suit. Even staff, pollsters, and advisers can’t micromanage him like they micromanage many politicians. However, because we’ve already had the benefit of a Trump presidency, we can see that even a president as vigorous and defiant as he struggled to truly exercise authority

Just before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their second presidential debate, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper met in the White House with a small group of advisers to President Obama to hatch a plan to put out a first-of-its-kind intelligence report warning the voting public that “the Russian government” was interfering in the election by allegedly breaching the Clinton campaign’s email system.

On Oct. 7, 2016 — just two days before the presidential debate between Trump and Clinton — Clapper issued the unprecedented intelligence advisory with Obama’s personal blessing. It seemed to lend credence to what the Clinton camp was telling the media — that Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election. Sure enough, the Democratic nominee pounced on it to smear Trump at the debate.

And that wouldn’t be the only historically consequential maneuver for Clapper, whose role in skewing presidential campaigns might deserve a special place in the annals of nefarious election meddling — by, in this case, a domestic, not foreign, intelligence service.

In 2020, he was the lead signatory on the “intelligence” statement that discredited the New York Post’s October bombshell exposing emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which documented how Hunter’s corrupt Burisma paymasters had met with Joe Biden when he was vice president. It was released Oct. 19, just three days before Trump and Biden debated each other in Nashville. Fifty other U.S. “intelligence community” officials and experts signed the seven-page document, which claimed “the

The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a petition to compel officials in Clark County, Nevada, which contains Las Vegas, to investigate and correct voter rolls.

PILF found hundreds of voters were registered to receive mail-in ballots at addresses including strip clubs, casinos, and even the Las Vegas Harry Reid International Airport, so it is taking action to make Nevada officials investigate incorrect addresses on the state’s voter rolls. 

“In Clark County, people are registered to vote from strip clubs, casinos, gas stations, and more crazy addresses where it appears no one could reasonably live,” said Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams in a press release. “We are asking the court to force Nevada election officials to investigate any improper commercial addresses on the voter roll.”

PILF filed a petition for mandamus on June 25 in the 8th District Court for the State of Nevada as part of a lawsuit. The move would force election officials in Clark County to investigate commercial addresses on voter rolls and make corrections where needed. 

The number of suspicious addresses on the state voter rolls is alarming because Nevada expanded mail-in voting in 2021, requiring county clerks to automatically send mail-in ballots to each registered voter. State law requires citizens to register to vote from the address where they reside.

Lauren Bis, director of communications and engagement for PILF, approached a bartender in a YouTube video of the investigation.

“I was looking for Ronald or William Phelps,” Bis said.

“I don’t know who