Joe Scarborough told his MSNBC audience in March 2024 that Biden was intellectually "the best Biden ever."
Biden couldn't finish a sentence on a debate stage a few months later.
But Donald Trump showed Xi Jinping exactly what replaced Joe Biden's portrait in the White House – and the most powerful communist on earth could not keep a straight face.
The Picture That Told Beijing Everything
Trump walked Xi through the West Wing's new Presidential Walk of Fame – gold-framed portraits of every commander in chief, right up to the gap where Biden's face should be.
In its place: a photograph of an autopen.
Xi laughed out loud.
Elon Musk dropped a tears-of-laughter emoji on Margo Martin's post of the clip.
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/2103185540262826055?s=20
The room played along.
Americans watching had a harder time laughing.
Because the machine in that frame didn't just sign letters – it signed pardons, executive orders, and national security waivers while Beijing was drawing its own conclusions about who was actually in charge.
What Xi Already Knew Before He Walked In
Xi did not need a White House tour to understand what the Biden years looked like from the other side of the table.
He had sat across from Biden through multiple summits – watching the abbreviated schedules, the staff positioned to redirect the president mid-movement, the carefully controlled exits.
Sen. Tom Cotton said it plainly in 2021: China wasn't probing for weakness – it was exploiting weakness Biden had already demonstrated.
Within a week of Biden's inauguration, Chinese Air Force bombers were flying into Taiwan's airspace.
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/2103193707705180261?s=20
While Joe Scarborough lectured America about Biden's brilliance, China kept building ships, wiring the Global South, squeezing the Philippines, and running drills around Taiwan.
When Biden appeared to fall asleep during a meeting with African leaders in Angola in December 2024, China deployed its largest show of naval force near Taiwan since 1996 – 60 warships and 30 coast guard vessels – in the same week.
A great power does not waste an open door.
Scarborough Said It Out Loud and China Heard It Too
Here is what actually cost America those four years.
It wasn't just Biden's decline – it was the people who spent years telling you there was nothing to see.
When the Wall Street Journal published its June 2024 investigation – "Behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping" – MSNBC's Mike Barnicle said he was "embarrassed for the Wall Street Journal."
Jen Psaki, Biden's own press secretary, went on a podcast last year and said she "never saw" any signs of cognitive decline during her daily time in the Oval Office.
The White House dismissed videos of a visibly confused president as "cheap fakes."
Joe Scarborough told his audience Biden was the best he'd ever been.
China's intelligence analysts don't watch MSNBC to get their feelings hurt.
They watch it to take notes.
Every time Scarborough waved off a concern, every time the White House called documented video a fabrication, every time the Democrat Party closed ranks to protect the man behind the autopen – Beijing logged it as confirmation that no one on the American side was going to stop them.
https://twitter.com/WizarGod/status/2103201450948251658?s=20
They weren't hiding Biden's decline from China.
They were hiding it from you.
Trump hanging that autopen portrait is not subtle and it is not petty – it is the current occupant of the White House telling Xi directly that the era of the empty chair is over, and the people who propped it up are going to answer for what that cost.
Xi laughed on Wednesday.
But Trump is the one still standing at the end of the tour.
Sources:
- Brooklynn Robinson, "Watch: Xi Descends Into Laughter as Trump Shows off 'President Autopen' Picture," The Western Journal, September 24, 2026.
- Tom Cotton, "Cotton on Chilling Warning by China: They're Exploiting Biden's Weakness," Fox News, October 2021.
- Wallace White, "China Threatens Taiwan With Largest Military Drill in Decades as Biden Quietly Disappears From World Stage," The Daily Signal, December 10, 2024.
- "Signs of Cognitive Decline in Biden Raise Questions About Media Coverage and Transparency," Fox 56, 2024.
- Sharon Knolle, "Jen Psaki Says It's 'Dangerous' to Describe Media Coverage Through Biden's Decline as a 'Cover-Up,'" The Wrap, May 2025.
