Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick revived an epic conspiracy theory from a month ago when he suggested on Sunday that Barack Obama was the mastermind behind President Joe Biden's rapid undoing in the aftermath of a debate with Donald Trump that fellow Democrats designed for him to fail.
As Patrick shared his fears of an all-Black national ticket for the Democrats this fall, Governor Greg Abbott demanded Biden's immediate resignation in a parrot cry that U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson got under way as soon as the president announced that he was stepping away and passing the torch to Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Abbott responded to the news of Biden's exit from the White House race with a social media tetralogy that endorsed the Patrick theory about the debate as an ambush and slammed Harris as a woke border czar. As the leader of a state that's become a capital for big government, Abbott mocked Harris' work on immigration as the VP and threatened to escalate state spending at the Rio Grande dramatically if she's the next president.
But Patrick arguably upstaged the governor in the Biden withdrawal reaction derby with a post on X that gave the impression that the Republican lieutenant governor tried to have the Democratic president's back by warning that it would be a mistake to debate Trump a full four months before the election. But Biden failed to heed the advice.
"The June debate was a hit job on Biden by his own party; humiliating him was step one to run him out," Patrick said without any hint of evidence. "There was no need for Biden to debate that early, as I said at the time. They were with him every day. They knew how badly he would perform. Obama has been running the White House and will continue to run it with Michelle or Kamala. They picked Biden in 2020 so Obama could serve a third term, and now Obama seeks a fourth term."
The Patrick tweet appeared to imply that Michelle Obama would be the Democratic nominee for president or VP on an apparent ticket with Harris if the former president who's her spouse is successful with the monumental scheme to run the country behind the scenes. But the Texas Senate president - astutely perhaps - didn't say that he would gamble anything on the clandestine plan he envisioned in the tweet that began on an eyebrow-lifting.
"Obama is seeking his 4th term as President," Patrick declared in the opening line of the conspiracy post.
Abbott agreed that the debate - with the benefit of hindsight - was indeed engineered to undermine the president's re-election campaign. But Abbott didn't finger Barack Obama or any other Democrats specifically as the ringleaders.
"It looks more and more like that very early debate was a set up to force Biden to step aside," Abbott said in the reflective post. "Today’s announcement may not have happened without that disastrous debate."
It wasn't clear why the top two Texas leader chose to harp on an event from the past. But it's probably fair to say that the Biden set-up scheme was a genius move if Abbott and Patrick are on the mark with their claims in light of the way the debate exposed the fact that the current president had aged considerably and no longer appeared qualified to lead the nation as a result.
Neither Abbott or Patrick pointed out that Trump - if elected this fall - would as old in the 18 months of his term as Biden is now at age 81. Neither member of the state's power duo have said whether age should still be an issue. Both should expect the Democrats to make it the leading issue in a race that will feature a Republican in his third swing as the presidential nominee at the age of 78 against a Democrat who's 19 years younger than himself.
more to come ...
