MAGA finds new reason to slam Biden, fails to realize Trump has been doing the same thing since 2016

In this week’s example of MAGA projection, certain Republicans are showing off their latest bout of performative outrage directed at the former president, Joe Biden. This latest manufactured scandal involves The Oversight Project, a group closely related to the right-wing Heritage Foundation thinktank (the very same organization behind Project 2025), and its “research” into documents signed by Biden while he was in office.

According to The Oversight Project, Biden used an “autopen” to sign various documents, including executive orders, while he was president. They posted some evidence from their “research” to the social media platform X, claiming that they gathered “every document [they] could find” with Biden’s signature on it, and that they “all used the same autopen signature.”

🚨WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY🚨

We gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency.

All used the same autopen signature except for the the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the… https://t.co/CC3oJUkNr4 pic.twitter.com/mtNrZsALDu

— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) March 6, 2025

The Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project would have everyone believe that this was a problem unique to Biden and, going further, that it suggested Biden was being “controlled” — that the use of an autopen was the symptom of a much larger problem: Biden’s “cognitive decline,” allowing him to be controlled by his staffers in an unlawful and unconstitutional way. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has written a letter filled with extraordinary claims to exactly this effect. Before digging into those incendiary claims, however, it’s good idea to get a little context. As reported in The Independent, Biden is not the first president to use an autopen to sign documents.

An autopen is a device programmed to recreate a person’s signature. Not only was Biden not the first sitting president to use the device — Barack Obama famously used it to sign the Patriot Act extension in 2011, among other bills — but Donald Trump himself used the device during both his first and second terms. One analysis showed that at least 25 documents signed by Trump were likely to have used an autopen, something also admitted by Fox News. The autopen has been used to help presidents sign bills when they are away from home since the Truman presidency.

Except it isn’t actually about the autopen. This is a straight-up attempt to cast doubt on the Biden administration, and if possible, reverse or negate some of the administration’s legislation without having to go through normal processes. It doesn’t matter that Trump has also used, and is presently using, an autopen to sign laws, because in their view, Trump is not compromised in any way.

Their narrative is that Biden was experiencing “cognitive decline,” an outgrowth of their “Sleepy Joe” attacks, which allowed staffers and people around Biden to control the president and push through policies without the president’s full and proper knowledge — including pardons, executive orders, and legislation that the Foundation doesn’t like and wants nullified. Andrew Bailey comes right out and says it in his letter:

It appears staffers and officers in the Biden administration may have exploited Biden’s incapacity so they could issue orders without an accountable President of sound mind approving them. That would explain why the Biden administration’s orders were aggressively much farther to the left than any previous President. If in fact Biden’s staffers were exploiting his mental decline, those orders are null and void.

As usual with MAGA, this is a projection, because it’s quite clear to everyone that Trump isn’t in full control of his own affairs. Trump reigns surrounded by a group of wannabe oligarchs and Project 2025 “intellectuals” while Elon Musk gives interviews from behind the Oval Office chair. It’s plain as day that Trump is pushed and pulled in exactly the right direction. Where Republicans are pointing the finger at Biden and his administration, they’d do better to look closer to home.