Other than using great drugs, how can Biden cheat at the debate?

Have you heard about those 16 experts who have been working feverishly for a week in advance of Thursday night’s presidential debate, putting Joe Biden together in a Hollywood-style studio inside an airplane hangar like Sandra Bullock in “Miss Congeniality”?

As a past member of the Screen Actors Guild, I can assure you it’s true that sometimes a boneheaded actor just can’t remember his lines. In the old days in Hollywood, the director would yell: “Somebody from the art department get in here with a magic marker and draw up some cue cards … right now!”

Now, far be it from our side to engage in any “dirty tricks,” but IFBs operate on a radio frequency, and frequencies can be easily intercepted and jammed.

A large swath of the online right has spent the lead-up to the debate speculating about what exotic cocktail of drugs Biden will need to ingest to look sharp and sound coherent in his CNN face-off with Donald Trump. They’re thinking of the catatonic Robert De Niro character in "Awakenings.” Wrong movie.

Today, it’s much easier for the brain-cell-challenged actor who can’t remember anything. The answer is a wireless version of a pigtail earphone called an IFB — interruptible foldback — often used by newscasters. It’s an ear-prompter, a tiny device that sits invisibly in the ear canal. They’re readily available online. There’s one called Ovation, and the complete wireless package, which includes a recorder to hold prepared comments, costs around $1,000.

Such a unit, properly modified, could provide direct radio access for instant communication.

This is particularly valuable to a handsome bard who can’t act, either, in that his acting coach can reassure him and lead him from a distance. “Look up. Turn left. Look into her eyes.” Equipped with such devices, Biden’s 16 debate aides, divided into two teams speaking into left and right ear-prompters — one for dialogue and the other for direction — can become the greatest ventriloquists since Edgar Bergen manipulated Charlie McCarthy.

Just imagine moderator Jake Tapper asks, “What is the greatest threat to democracy?” And an aide-ventriloquist responds, “Donald Trump is the greatest threat to democracy!” Another aide says, “Look to your left with anger, Joe.”

With any luck, it will come out, “Trump is angry at the left, Joe.”

A further question, from Dana Bash, might be, “Will you pardon your son, Hunter, now that he’s been convicted of a gun crime?” The first aide says, “I will never stoop to that level.” Another aide panics and yells, “No, Joe! He said stoop, not poop! Watch out for the stairs!”

Of course, this isn’t the first time the idea of Biden using an earpiece has come up. In 2020, the Trump campaign complained that Biden’s camp first agreed to an inspection for illicit devices and then reneged at the last minute. A Biden spokesman denied the charge. Naturally, the unquestioning press accepted the spokesman’s statement and dismissed Trump’s claims as just another “conspiracy theory.”

Maybe. Who knows?

Now, far be it from those supporting the Bad Orange Man to engage in any “dirty tricks,” but IFBs transmit on radio frequencies, and those frequencies can be easily intercepted and jammed. A Trump campaign staffer would need a scanner. If Biden is using an IFB, the frequency wouldn’t be difficult to locate, unless he is using a more sophisticated device that hops frequencies.

Once located, it could be jammed — or taken over. The British did this often during World War II, using men and later women who spoke fluent German to insert confusing instructions over Nazi night fighter control channels. It worked marvelously well.

Not that the Trump campaign would ever consider such chicanery. Or that Biden would seriously consider cheating in the first place.