An “empty vessel occupying the Oval Office” allowed President Biden’s shadowy handlers to make sure “a poisonous anti-Western, anti-American ideology that had once been confined to elite university classrooms became the official White House policy.”

That’s the considered assessment of Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, who co-chaired a historic first hearing Wednesday on the Joe Biden dementia coverup.

An empty vessel, Schmitt said, “becomes a puppet for those surrounding him.”

In his prepared remarks to open the hearing, in which he took an ice pick to the Biden dementia coverup, Schmitt said the title of the hearing – “Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution” – “captures a sobering and undeniable truth: President Biden was mentally unfit to carry out the responsibilities of the most powerful office in the world. …

“This was not a sudden decline that began in June of 2024. It was a persistent and obvious truth that was evident for years to anyone willing to see it.

“This reality did not require special insider knowledge or investigative reporting to uncover.

“We didn’t need Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson to tell us what millions of Americans could freely observe with their own eyes. The truth was glaringly obvious: Anyone who was paying attention could tell that the Emperor had no clothes.”

While Democrats called the investigation of an out-to-lunch president “political” and largely refused to participate, Schmitt noted Biden’s cognitive frailty did serious real-world damage to both domestic life and foreign affairs:

• On Border Policy: Our nation’s immigration system was handed over to a radical left-wing element inside the administration, throwing open our borders to tens of millions of illegal aliens — an unprecedented immigration crisis that pulled our entire nation into chaos.
• On Foreign Policy: Haphazard and reckless decisions placed our warfighters in jeopardy, escalated conflicts around the globe, and led to a catastrophic humiliation on the world stage that claimed the lives of 13 American soldiers during our disastrous withdrawal from Kabul.
• On the Economy: Rampant inflation drove up the cost of life’s essentials, making them unaffordable for countless hardworking families.
• In the realm of Culture: The regime censored free speech, closed down churches, targeted traditional Catholics and parents at school board meetings, and let an unelected class of left-wing radicals degrade, attack and lie about our history and heritage. A poisonous anti-Western, anti-American ideology that had once been confined to elite university classrooms became the official White House policy.

“All of this was not done in isolation. It was sustained, defended and covered for by an alliance of elite institutions — from the media, to the so-called ‘expert’ class, to Big Tech, to the federal bureaucracy itself.

“When we speak of collusion among elites or the so-called ‘deep state,’ we are accused of being ‘conspiracy theorists.’ But this was no theory. It was plain and overt — out in the open for everyone to see.

“For four years, we had a president who could barely string together coherent sentences after 6 p.m., yet this glaring fact went unreported, undiscussed, and unaddressed.

“Why? Because the Democrat Party, corporate media, federal bureaucracy, and Big Tech companies collaborated to conceal the truth from the American people – not out of ignorance, but because it advanced their own interests.

“In the absence of a functioning president, chaos took hold.”

Arguing that people deserve to know who was running the country the past four years, Schmitt decried Democrats for professing no interest in getting to the bottom of one of American history’s biggest scandals.

“Today, as we seek to uncover the truth, it is deeply disappointing – but not surprising – that the Democrats on this committee have chosen to all but boycott this hearing and have failed to call a single witness.

“Their absence speaks volumes – an implicit admission that the truth is too inconvenient to face. By refusing to engage in this critical examination, they abdicate their responsibility to the American people

“This boycott is not just a refusal to participate; it is a refusal to serve the American people who deserve answers about who was truly leading their government.”