New Republic editor Michael Tomasky says he doubts the motive behind a new House Republican investigation of President Joe Biden’s use of the autopen.
“The House Oversight Committee, led by that sea-green incorruptible James Comer, is preparing to subpoena some top Biden administration officials to get to the bottom of this ‘scandal,’ which Donald Trump has been braying about for months,” said Tomasky.
Congressional Republicans, who are taking their cues from President Donald Trump, according to NBC News, see the use of autopens as a key line of attack on Democrats who allegedly withheld the truth of Biden’s mental fitness.
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“Comer, you’ll recall, had spent $20 million taxpayer dollars investigating the ‘Biden Crime Family’ last summer and turned up nothing, which naturally never stopped him from going on Fox News to announce that a new devastating revelation was just around the corner,” Tomasky said, adding that he wasn’t sure what Comer was trying to prove considering the use of an autopen to sign legally binding documents appears to be within the parameters of the Constitution.
“Joe Biden’s mental acuity will hardly be an issue at the top of voters’ minds come 2028. However, someone else’s mental acuity might be,” Tomasky added, referencing what Mother Jones called a “bizarre” Memorial Day commencement speech at West Point.
“And we are buying you new airplanes, brand-new, beautiful planes, redesigned planes, brand-new planes, totally stealth planes,” Trump told the 2025 West Point graduating class. “I hope they’re stealth. I don’t know, that whole stealth thing, I’m sorta wondering. You mean if we shape a wing this way, they don’t see it, but the other way they see it? I’m not so sure.”
The speech that included Trump proclaiming God intended for him to be president at this point in time while advising the graduating class to avoid ‘trophy wives,’ was “no more bizarre than most Trump speeches,” Tomasky said. He added that he is not the only person to suggest Trump’s behavior “could be a sign of mental illness, or it could be a sign of early-stage dementia in a 78-year-old man,” as MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell recently suggested
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Tomasky said Trump is only president again thanks to a cadre of supporters “lying and covering for him,” including “Fox News hosts. The Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro types. Aileen Cannon, notably. Nearly every Republican office holder, either by commission or omission.”
“Comer, in his odd way, is proof of this,” Tomasky said. “…. He’s bumbled his way through these investigations telling lie after lie and blooper after blooper. But by cracky, he’s still the chairman of the powerful House Oversight Committee.”
“The Biden autopen is the new ‘but her emails,’ And when it runs its course, they’ll find a new pseudo-scandal to pursue. I suppose we can take comfort in the fact that they keep getting dumber,” he said.
Read the full TNR report at this link.