Engineering incompetence into destiny: the 2024 retrospective gambit

Analyzing: Don’t Blame Jill for Joe 2024 — Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. · 2026-06-02

What the Editorial Argues

Holman Jenkins argues that Biden’s 2024 campaign was cynically engineered to face Donald Trump specifically, with documented evidence that Biden publicly signaled this preference in March 2022, after which White House officials met with state prosecutors in Georgia and New York who then brought cases against Trump. Jenkins contends these prosecutions were timed to strengthen Trump in the GOP primary while weakening him generally—exactly the formula Biden needed—and that when Biden’s polling collapsed and he was forced into a debate that revealed his cognitive decline, the strategy backfired. The piece concludes that Trump’s narrow victory (115,000 votes in three states) was the result not of the American electorate endorsing Trump but of Democratic Party incompetence in fielding a collapsed candidate after their orchestrated prosecutorial strategy failed.

Receipts

The editorial infers coordination between the White House and prosecutors from temporal proximity and meetings, but produces no documented evidence of direction, instruction, or agreement; the one-year gap between the Daily News story (March 2022) and Bragg’s decision to revive the investigation (March 2023) illustrates how strained this temporal inference is.

What the framing wants you to believe:

• Biden deliberately coordinated with prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions to bring cases against Trump.
• The timing and effect of the prosecutions were designed to serve Biden’s campaign matchup preferences.
• Fani Willis’s prosecution in Georgia was “a service to the White House” and Willis “was entitled to a gratuity.”
• The prosecutions succeeded in their strategic goal (Trump weakened generally but strengthened in the GOP primary) until Biden’s own collapse forced him to debate Trump and exposed his unfitness.

What’s really going on:

• Jenkins connects White House meetings with prosecutors to prosecutorial decisions and infers coordination on the basis of mutual benefit and timeline proximity, but produces no documented evidence of direction, instruction, or agreement between White House and prosecutors. When a 2022 newspaper story is offered as causation for a 2023 prosecutorial decision, the inference mechanism requires interrogation.
• The “staged leak” is asserted because the Times didn’t require White House confirmation, but this is standard Times practice for authorized leaks, not proof of a “deniability charade.”
• Willis’s boyfriend-on-payroll (real; became grounds for her recusal) is used as proof of White House gratuity, reading corruption into her conduct without documentation of her intent or White House direction. The local-corruption issue becomes a bridge to the alleged federal-coordination allegation without evidence that the two are connected.
• The prosecutions’ effect (analysts’ assessment that Trump indictments would strengthen him in the primary) is presented as evidence that Biden orchestrated the timing, when the analysts were describing effects, not proving causation or coordination.
• The classified-documents case against Biden itself is mischaracterized: Hur found “willful retention” but recommended against prosecution on jury-sympathy grounds; Jenkins frames this as Biden being “too old and forgetful,” which is Jenkins’s interpretation, not Hur’s stated reasoning.
• Load-bearing omission: No examination of whether the prosecutions had merit on the underlying conduct. No acknowledgment of state prosecutors’ institutional independence. No documentation of White House direction to any prosecutor. No source for the Times quote about Biden’s aides’ reaction to Iowa. No engagement with Trump’s own political strength as a driver of his primary victory. No examination of whether voters chose Trump affirmatively or defaulted to him when the Democratic nominee was weak. No engagement with the counterfactual (would these cases have been brought absent Biden’s stated preference?). No discussion of whether the prosecutions’ standalone legal merits provided independent justification for prosecution.

The Operation

Institutional Authorship and Placement

The piece is a Wall Street Journal member-of-editorial-board column, signed by Jenkins but carrying the editorial board’s institutional voice-weight. Jenkins has been at the Journal since 1992 and holds a leadership position in the editorial section. The column’s placement on the Journal’s op-ed page means it carries institutional credibility and reaches a significant audience of institutional decision-makers and political elites.

Distributional impact: The framing serves the interests of Trump supporters (permission to believe the prosecution narrative) and Journal readers skeptical of Democratic governance (confirmation of incompetence narrative). The cost is borne by readers evaluating the prosecutions on their merits, by state prosecutors operating under inference of White House direction (without documented evidence), and by the rule-of-law infrastructure (if prosecutions are systematically alleged to be political without evidence, trust in independent prosecution erodes).

Cui Bono — Full Trace

Primary beneficiary: Trump supporters and Journal readers predisposed to believe Democratic prosecutions are illegitimate; those whose political identity requires explaining Trump’s election as Democratic failure rather than Trump strength.

Secondary beneficiary: The WSJ editorial board’s institutional position of skepticism toward Democratic administrations and prosecutorial discretion.

Mechanism: The column supplies a narrative of coordinated malfeasance that, even without smoking-gun evidence, creates felt-sense of corruption. Readers absorb the meetings + prosecutions + effects = orchestration inference without requiring the coordination documentation. The inference becomes a sticky frame: “Biden orchestrated the prosecutions” becomes a talking point repeated beyond the column’s forensic limits. The frame permits Trump support without affirmative endorsement—readers can support Trump because he won, without needing to defend his record or platform.

Cost-bearer: Citizens trying to evaluate whether the prosecutions had merit. Prosecutors in Georgia and New York operating under inference of White House direction (without documented evidence). Voter agency in the 2024 election (the outcome is attributed to Democratic strategy rather than to millions of independent voter decisions). Trump’s own conduct and political record (they are bracketed out of analysis in favor of Democratic-failure framing).

Technique Identification

1. Circumstantial-Inference-as-Coordination (pragma-dialectic burden-of-proof violation)

Jenkins takes documented facts (the meetings happened; Willis had a boyfriend on the payroll) and infers causation and intent (Willis was serving the White House and receiving gratuity). The inference is presented as fact (“Her prosecution… was a service to the White House”) without producing documentation of direction, instruction, or agreement. This violates the burden-of-proof rule: asserting a complex causal claim without meeting the standard of evidence such a claim requires.

2. Selective Evidentiary Deployment — Analysts’ Effect-Assessment as Causation-Proof

Jenkins cites cable analysts’ assessment that the NYC indictment would strengthen Trump in the primary and weaken him generally, then uses this as evidence that Biden deliberately orchestrated the indictment timing to produce this effect. The analysts were describing the effect of the indictment; Jenkins is using their effect-description as proof of Biden’s causation. This is advantageous comparison: the formula Biden needed is juxtaposed with the analysts’ assessment, creating an appearance of alignment that suggests causation without establishing it.

3. Mischaracterization of the Hur Report

Hur’s actual report stated that Biden “willfully retained the documents” but recommended against prosecution on the grounds that a jury would likely be sympathetic to his age and memory issues. Jenkins’s formulation (“too old and forgetful”) frames Hur’s prosecution-decision reasoning (jury sympathy) as Hur’s characterization of Biden’s mental state. This is equivocation: the term “reported” is used ambiguously to suggest Hur characterized Biden as cognitively unfit, when Hur actually found willful retention but recommended non-prosecution on jury-sympathy grounds.

4. Ad Hominem — Willis’s Boyfriend as Proof of White House Gratuity

The boyfriend-on-payroll fact (real; documented; became grounds for Willis’s recusal) is presented as evidence that Willis was receiving a gratuity from the White House. But the boyfriend-on-payroll is a corruption-of-the-local-prosecution issue, not evidence of White House coordination. Jenkins uses the real local corruption as a bridge to the alleged White House coordination, but the two are not the same claim.

5. Strawman of the Prosecutions

Jenkins does not engage with the substantive charges in any case—January 6 conduct, classified-documents handling, Georgia election-interference claims. Instead, he treats all prosecutions as purely strategic Democratic moves timed to affect the nomination. This forecloses analysis of what the conduct itself was and whether it was plausibly criminal. The piece reduces prosecutorial decisions to tactical positioning, removing them from the domain of legal judgment.

6. Monocausal Attribution — Trump’s Victory as Democratic Incompetence Rather Than Plurality of Factors

Jenkins attributes Trump’s narrow victory entirely to Democratic Party incompetence in fielding a collapsed candidate (“cardboard cutout”). This ignores other documented factors: Trump’s base turnout, Trump’s political strength, Harris’s compressed campaign timeline, swing-voter preferences. By attributing the entire outcome to one factor (Democratic field weakness), Jenkins displaces (a) independent voter choice for Trump, (b) Trump’s own political strength and appeal, and (c) other drivers of his electoral success. The piece treats the outcome as determined by Democratic strategy rather than by millions of independent voter decisions.

7. Equivocation on “Strategy” / “Incompetence”

The piece presents the 2024 campaign as strategically designed to get Trump as the nominee, and it succeeded in getting Trump. Yet it’s also characterized as an example of Democratic incompetence that led to Trump’s victory. These cannot both be true in the same register. The equivocation allows Jenkins to use “incompetence” as a conclusion rather than as a premise that requires argument.

8. False Dilemma

“Such an election isn’t a mandate for a revolution. Mr. Trump might yet have won the country’s backing for what he was doing.” The piece presents outcomes as either (a) a mandate for Trump’s program or (b) a result of Democratic incompetence. It doesn’t engage with third options: voters chose Trump against Biden/Harris specifically, without necessarily endorsing Trump’s program; turnout and coalition-shift dynamics produced the outcome; Trump’s narrow margins represent ordinary electoral variance, not a determined outcome.

9. Hasty Generalization

“Every book writer, every political journalist, fails when they fail to say the truth about the 2024 Biden campaign, a selfish, cynical roll of the dice that was always more likely to end in a Trump election than a Biden second term.” This is a universal claim (“every book writer, every political journalist”) asserted without evidence and offered as obviously true, a standard invoked to dismiss the entire body of 2024-campaign literature without engaging with specific works.

10. Presupposition of Bad Motive Without Evidence

Jenkins reads Willis’s conduct (employing her boyfriend, expensive vacations) as proof of her intent (to serve the White House) and her motive (entitlement to gratuity). But the conduct is ambiguous and Jenkins does not produce documentation of her intent or the White House’s direction.

Lineage

The conspiracy-narrative structure Jenkins deploys—treating temporal proximity as causation, inferring unified direction from scattered facts, attributing agency to Democratic operatives across separate institutions—traces to the Cold War paranoia tradition that Arendt analyzed in The Origins of Totalitarianism: the totalitarian move of making the world cohere into a unified plot determined by enemy agency. In contemporary form, it’s adjacent to QAnon-adjacent conspiracy rhetoric: the practice of connecting separate, documented facts (meetings, prosecutions, leaked stories) into a unified orchestration hypothesis without the comprehensive documentary paper trail that would establish coordination. The technique is not unique to Jenkins; it’s a recurring shape across contemporary political speech. Its deployment here in the WSJ editorial-board frame grants it institutional authority and normalized respectability.

Audience-Management Function

The column supplies comprehensive narrative management for a specific audience segment:

• Permission structure: Readers skeptical of Democratic prosecutions are given permission to believe those prosecutions were illegitimate, without requiring smoking-gun evidence. The inference pattern (“meetings + prosecutions + effects = orchestration”) is normalized. Readers can support Trump without affirmatively endorsing his platform, conduct, or record; the piece licenses support by treating Trump as incidentally victorious, not as affirmatively chosen.
• Identity confirmation: Journal readers are constructed as an in-group (“us”) that sees the truth while naive institutions (mainstream press, book writers, journalists) obscure it. The narrative is portable across outlets and speech contexts.
• Grievance ratification: The narrative (“Democrats orchestrated prosecutions, then fielded a cardboard-cutout candidate”) ratifies the grievance that Democrats are not trustworthy stewards.
• Conscience displacement: Readers who supported Trump are relieved of having to defend Trump on his merits; Trump’s victory becomes the result of Democratic failure, not Trump strength or voter choice.
• Status display: Journal readership includes institutional elites and political operatives; Jenkins’s sophisticated analysis supplies a respectable register in which the orchestration-theory can be cited in serious settings.

The Record

Anchored Receipts (Tier 1 — Wire Services, Primary Documents)

Claim	Source	Status	Caveat
Biden stated preference for Trump as opponent	Biden’s March 24, 2022 remarks at NATO summit	TRUE	Public statement; interpretation as campaign-strategy signal is Jenkins’s reading
White House officials met with Georgia prosecutors	Documented in Fani Willis testimony and Georgia case disclosures (May 23, 2022 and Nov. 18, 2022)	TRUE	Meetings documented; purpose and direction not documented in the citation; routine political-coordination meetings are distinguishable from direction
Fani Willis employed her boyfriend; they had expensive expenditures	Court filings; became grounds for Willis’s recusal	TRUE	Local-corruption issue (Georgia prosecutor’s conduct), not evidence of White House coordination
Alvin Bragg dropped Stormy Daniels case and then revived it	NYC news reporting and court records	TRUE	Bragg’s reasons for the shift not documented in the citation or provided by Jenkins
Cable analysts said NYC indictment would strengthen Trump in primary, weaken him generally	Jenkins cites “analysts on the cable business channels” but provides no specific attributions or quotes	PLAUSIBLE BUT UNSOURCED	Analysis of this kind was widespread; the specific claim is plausible but Jenkins does not provide specific attribution; analysts were assessing effects, not proving Biden orchestrated timing
Robert Hur special counsel investigation; Hur found “willful retention” of documents	Hur’s public report released February 2024	TRUE	Hur found willful retention but recommended non-prosecution on jury-sympathy grounds; Jenkins’s characterization (“too old and forgetful”) is a gloss, not Hur’s actual language or stated reasoning
Trump’s 2024 victory margin (115,000 votes in three states)	Election data; reported widely	TRUE	Accurate
Trump’s approval ratings show “something more closely resembling the opposite” of a mandate	Unattributed; no source provided	UNCONFIRMED	No source cited; Jenkins asserts without evidence; polling varies; without attribution and date, this claim is not falsifiable

Unconfirmed Claims (Convergence Threshold Not Met)

Claim	Documentary Basis	Status
Donilon, Ricchetti, and Dunn orchestrated the strategy described	”Reported to be” (source not cited)	Unconfirmed: Jenkins reports hearsay without named source
The Times leak (March 31, 2022) was “staged” / White House-coordinated	Pattern observation (Times cooperation in “deniability charade”)	Unconfirmed: the inference is from the story’s structure, not from documented White House direction; the Times’s inclusion of Biden’s “no role” quote is compatible with either coordinated messaging or standard news-sourcing practice
Alvin Bragg’s decision to revive the Stormy Daniels investigation (March 2023) was influenced by Daily News coverage (March 2022)	Temporal proximity; no causal documentation	Unconfirmed: one-year gap between coverage and decision is very long; no evidence that Bragg cited the coverage or was responding to it; the temporal inference is strained
Willis’s relationship with Wade and the payments were authorized or enabled by White House	Meetings documented; motive inferred	Unconfirmed: meetings between Willis’s attorney and White House officials are documented; the inference that these meetings constituted White House direction of Willis’s prosecution is not documented; Willis-Wade payments are documented as occurring, but coordination with the White House is inferred, not evidenced
The prosecutions were timed by the White House to affect the 2024 nomination	Circumstantial timing; no documentary coordination	Unconfirmed: the cases’ actual timelines (Georgia indictment August 2023, Manhattan indictment March 2023, federal classified-documents case June 2023) don’t obviously correlate with Democratic-strategy needs; no documented White House direction of any prosecutor; separate institutional actors (Willis, Bragg, Smith) are treated as coordinated without evidence of communication or shared instructions

Load-Bearing Omissions

1. The merits of the prosecutions. The column does not engage whether the underlying conduct (Trump’s alleged criminal conduct) had legal merit. By omitting this, Jenkins frames all prosecution as potentially political without examining whether any were justified on the facts.

2. Institutional independence of prosecutors. No discussion of state prosecutors’ legal duty to operate independently of executive influence, or the checks on that independence. By omitting this, Jenkins treats the meetings as dispositive without examining institutional barriers to coordination.

3. The counterfactual. No engagement with: would these cases have been brought absent Biden’s stated preference? The column asserts the inference without exploring the alternative explanation (the cases were brought on their merits or for reasons independent of Democratic campaign strategy).

4. Alternative drivers of Trump’s primary strength and general-election performance. The column attributes Trump’s victory entirely to Democratic Party incompetence. But Trump’s base mobilization, the fractured GOP field, Trump’s media dominance, Trump’s own political strength and appeal—all are unmentioned. By omitting these, Jenkins produces a monocausal narrative that treats contingent outcomes as predetermined.

5. Independent voter choice. The column treats the 2024 outcome as determined by Democratic strategy rather than by millions of independent voter decisions. No engagement with: Why did swing voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin prefer Trump to Harris? What were voters responding to?

6. Trump’s own conduct, record, and platform as independent variables. By omitting substantive engagement with January 6, classified-documents handling, and Georgia election-interference allegations on their merits, Jenkins treats prosecutions as strategy rather than as responses to conduct. The question “Did the conduct itself warrant prosecution?” is foreclosed.

7. Willis’s own statements about her prosecutorial reasoning. The column reads Willis’s conduct as proof of White House service, but does not cite her own (public) statements about her reasons for the prosecution. By omitting this, Jenkins substitutes inference for her own account.

8. Source attribution for the Times quote about Biden’s aides and Iowa. Jenkins quotes the Times but does not cite the date or provide a link, making it impossible to verify the exact context or the accuracy of the excerpt.

Falsifications That Would Defeat the Analysis

• Documentary evidence of White House direction of any of the prosecutions (would refute the “inference without evidence” critique)
• Polling showing that voters preferred Trump independent of Democratic-campaign weaknesses
• Evidence that Biden’s strategy was designed to lose, not to win
• Testimony from Bragg, Willis, or federal prosecutors stating that their decisions were independent of Democratic strategy
• Substantive engagement demonstrating that the prosecutions lacked legal merit

Symmetric-Application Note

This is a liberty-frame column critiquing a greater-good-paramount coalition (Democrats). Jenkins himself has institutional stakes in the narrative (the piece aligns with WSJ editorial-board retrospective positioning on 2024). The symmetric-application question is whether Jenkins applies the same conspiracy-narrative standards to a greater-good-paramount commentary that connected Republican-side facts (e.g., state-level election-oversight appointments, litigation funding, conservative-media messaging) into a unified orchestration hypothesis without documented coordination. The piece itself does not establish whether Jenkins applies these standards symmetrically across coalitions.

How to Recognize This

The Pattern

This is the inference-without-documentation pattern deployed in election-outcome attribution. The writer connects documented facts (Biden’s stated preference, meetings, prosecutions, timelines, effects) into a causal narrative of Democratic orchestration of the 2024 outcome, then attributes Trump’s victory to Democratic strategy rather than to voter choice, Trump’s own strength, or other independent factors. The inference is presented as conclusion rather than as hypothesis. Readers absorb the inference as fact because:

1. The underlying facts are real and verifiable (Biden did say he wanted Trump; meetings did happen).
2. The inference is plausible (White Houses do sometimes prefer certain opponents; prosecutions can have political effects).
3. The writer is sophisticated and credentialed (Holman Jenkins, WSJ editorial board), which confers presumed trustworthiness.
4. The piece does not explicitly claim documentation (“we have evidence”; “documents show”); it infers and states conclusions.
5. The frame offers narrative coherence (the outcome makes sense as Democratic self-sabotage) and permission structure (readers can support Trump without examining his record).

The Mechanism — What This Does to the Reader

The inference-without-documentation pattern activates the reader’s pattern-recognition system. Once the reader accepts that meetings + prosecutions + effects = coordination, the reader is primed to apply the same inference-pattern elsewhere. The reader becomes a carrier of the allegation: “Biden orchestrated the prosecutions” becomes a talking point, repeated beyond the column’s original caveated language, until it functions as established fact. The pattern also displaces voter agency—the election outcome is attributed to Democratic strategy rather than to millions of independent voter decisions, which relieves readers of having to examine Trump’s own conduct, record, or appeal.

Textual Signals — How to Recognize It Next Time

1. Temporal proximity treated as causation without causal documentation. Look for: “On [date], X happened; [timeframe later], Y happened; this shows Z was planned.” When the timeframe is very long (e.g., March 2022 to March 2023), the inference is especially strained. Jenkins does not explain why a 2022 newspaper story would cause a 2023 prosecutorial decision. Ask: what is the causal mechanism?

2. Complex coordination inferred from meetings and timeline without producing the coordination evidence. When a writer alleges X coordinated with Y to produce Z, look for the evidence of coordination (memos, testimony, admissions, documented communications). If meetings and timeline are the only evidence, you have an inference, not a proof. Demand: What specifically shows White House direction of the prosecutor?

3. Local-corruption facts used as bridges to larger allegations. Willis’s boyfriend-on-payroll is a real corruption issue. Jenkins uses it as evidence of White House gratuity. The two are not the same. Look for the jump from one level of allegation to another and ask: what is the documented connection?

4. Effects-assessment treated as causation-proof. “The analysts said the indictment would strengthen Trump in the primary” is an effect-assessment. “Biden orchestrated the indictment to achieve that effect” is a causation-claim. These are not equivalent. When a writer presents one as proof of the other, you have an inference, not evidence.

5. Absence of the counterfactual. If the prosecutor would have brought the case absent Biden’s preference, it’s not orchestration. If the case had merit on its own facts, it’s potentially prosecution regardless of political effects. When a writer does not explore these alternatives, they’re operating in inference mode. Ask: Would this case have been brought without Biden’s stated preference?

6. Presupposition of motive without source. “Ms. Willis was telling you something with her behavior” presupposes Willis’s intent without sourcing it. Look for where the writer documents intent (testimony, statements, memos) and where they infer it (character reading, behavior assessment). Inference is not evidence. Demand: Where does Willis state her intent? What do the prosecutors say about their own reasoning?

7. Monocausal attribution of complex outcomes. “Trump won because Democrats fielded a weak candidate” attributes the outcome to one factor. Look for whether the writer has considered alternative drivers (Trump’s strength, turnout, policy, swing-voter preferences, etc.). Single-factor causation is often inference, not proof. Ask: What other factors drove the outcome?

8. Outcome-attribution that brackets out voter agency. When a writer attributes election outcomes to institutional strategy rather than to voter decisions, the reader’s agency is displaced. Ask: Why did individual voters prefer Trump? What choices were they making?

What To Do When You See It

1. Trace the causal chain. For each causal claim, identify the evidence that supports each step. Mark the boundary where evidence ends and inference begins.

2. Separate documented facts from inferred conclusions. The meetings: documented. The inference that they constituted White House direction: not documented. Note the difference in your evaluation.

3. Check the temporal mechanism. If a 2022 newspaper story is offered as causation for a 2023 prosecutorial decision, what’s the mechanism? What connects them beyond temporal proximity?

4. Demand the coordination evidence. Allegations of coordination across institutions require documentation (memos, testimony, admissions, statements). Meetings and timeline are necessary but not sufficient.

5. Engage with the target’s conduct independently. What did Trump actually do? What did Georgia’s election officials testify about? What were the classified documents and what was Trump’s response? These questions must be answered independent of Democratic strategy.

6. Check the symmetric application. If you demand coordination evidence for allegations against one coalition, demand it for allegations against the other. Would the same inference-narrative be applied to opposite-coalition facts?

7. Verify citations. When the writer cites a source, find it. Check whether the quote is in context and whether the interpretation is supported. If the source is unattributed, note that it’s unverifiable.

8. Reduce the frame’s automatic activation. Once you see the pattern, the inference loses some of its force. Knowing that Jenkins is inferring (not documenting) helps you hold the claim at arm’s length while you evaluate the evidence yourself.

The reader carries this pattern recognition forward. The inference-without-documentation structure is increasingly normalized in opinion writing across coalitions. This particular column is not lying; it is making an inference that exceeds its evidence. Your responsibility as a reader is to recognize the inference, evaluate it on its merits (is it plausible? is it likely?), and resist the move from plausibility to certainty. When a narrative is coherent and satisfying, it activates the pattern-recognition system. The discipline is to interrogate that activation and ask: What is documented, and what is inferred?