Beyond Epstein: The Faux "Biden Autopen Scandal" Proves That MAGA Brainrot Is Real
- john raymond
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
The Biden autopen “scandal” is not just a distraction—it’s a symptom. A symptom of a deeper epistemic decay within the MAGA worldview, where basic facts no longer matter, legal precedent is irrelevant, and the truth is whatever helps sustain the illusion of Trumpian infallibility. That this story gained traction at all—and is still being used by Donald Trump, James Comer, and the right-wing propaganda machine—proves what many of us have long feared: that MAGA brainrot is no longer a metaphor. It’s a full-blown epistemological condition.
Let’s review the so-called scandal. President Biden used an autopen—a mechanical device that reproduces a person’s signature—to finalize a batch of presidential pardons and clemency orders. He did so while out of town. The outrage machine immediately kicked into gear. Trump called it “the biggest scandal in 50 years.” House Republicans launched investigations. Conservative media cried constitutional crisis. Social media influencers frothed at the mouth. Biden must be incapacitated! Staffers must be running the country! He’s not the real president!
Except: it’s all legal. It’s all been done before. And Biden explicitly stated that he authorized every decision, every name, every letter. He called the outrage “utter bullshit”—and he’s right.
This isn’t about signatures. It’s about a political movement so consumed by its own propaganda that it can no longer distinguish between irregularity and routine. The autopen—a legal, well-established device used by presidents from Truman to Obama to Trump—isn’t the scandal. The scandal is how easily MAGA believers can be triggered into performative hysteria by the sight of a squiggly line that wasn’t personally drawn by Joe Biden’s own pen.
The MAGA mindset is no longer conservative. It is conspiratorial. It’s not skeptical of government overreach; it’s delusional about basic civics. They don’t care that the Department of Justice approved the autopen’s use in 2005. They don’t care that previous Republican presidents used it. They don’t even care that Trump himself relied on the autopen when it was convenient. All that matters is that Biden used it, and therefore it must be illegitimate.
This is the same broken logic that leads the MAGA base to believe the 2020 election was stolen, that January 6 was peaceful, that vaccines are poison, that Trump can declassify documents by thinking about them, and now—laughably—that a signature machine is proof of a silent coup.
And what makes this worse is the timing. At a moment when America might finally hold powerful men accountable—men like Jeffrey Epstein’s enablers, even Donald Trump himself—the right is frantically inventing new scandals to keep the public distracted. Ask yourself: why are Republicans not demanding the full release of the Epstein client list? Why are they fighting subpoenas and dodging questions while instead grilling Biden over a pen?
The answer is simple: this isn’t about truth. It’s about control.
The “autopen scandal” is not just a non-story—it’s a test. A test of how far the MAGA movement can go in substituting theater for truth, narrative for fact, and emotion for evidence. It has passed that test with flying colors. And in doing so, it has revealed itself as a movement not merely deluded, but incapable of being tethered to reality at all.
So no, this isn’t about a pen. It’s about power. It’s about bad-faith actors sowing doubt for the sake of doubt, because chaos is their currency. It’s about a political machine that will burn down the house if it means one more day of power.
And most of all, it’s about proving once again—beyond Epstein, beyond the courts, beyond the facts—that MAGA brainrot is not only real. It is metastatic.
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