Could I Have Cracked the Biden Brain Code?

Somewhere in the kaleidoscopic gray matter of Joseph Robinette Biden, amidst the weirdo Walter Mitty–esque fantasies and bogus tales of truck driving and black-church attendance, of contrived bravado about South African jailings and Naval Academy acceptance, of college-transcript lies and speech plagiarism, are geriatric neurons clipping and misfiling memory bits, gathering some together via mental duct-tape, rendering the ensemble into a never-happened movie recollection, which finds its way to the presidential malarkey-hole, from where it is blathered into our culture, taking the form of the phrase “lying dog-faced pony soldier” — uttered with confidence as if the head-scratching insult is some widely understood cinematic reference, à la “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” and “What we have here is failure to communicate.” 

Just what is Joe Biden communicating with this catchphrase, which he ascribes to John Wayne?  

Who knows? Another question: Has the Turner Classic Movies junkie ever heard “lying dog-faced pony soldier” uttered by John Wayne? (A National Review subscriber: “It’s my kind of magazine.”) Or anyone other than Delaware’s most prominent basement napper? 

Let’s admit this: “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is something no actor, not even the Duke, has ever uttered.  

Except in composite.  

An exploration/investigation of John Wayne’s filmography concludes: A patchwork of scenes from two Wayne movies has likely melded together in the Biden brain clutter and produced the nonsensical, contrived line. 

The movie with the bounty of disjointed memories is She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, John Ford’s 1949 classic starring the Duke and the usual suspects (Ward Bond, Harry Carey Jr., Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen) from Ford’s “stock company.” The smallest contribution to the Biden contrivance here is . . . “pony.” 

The likely borrowed and repurposed recollection of this one word may come from a character played by Chief John Big Tree of the Seneca Nation, who appeared in many movies over three decades. His penultimate performance in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon as “Chief Pony That Walks” was highlighted in a beloved back-and-forth with his old friend, the Wayne-played Colonel Nathan Brittles. It is one of the more endearing and memorable parts of the film.  

Nathan! I am a Christian—Hallelujah! Old friend . . . smoke pipe, good, good . . .  You come with me, hunt many buffalo together, smoke many pipe, we are too old for war. . . . You come with me, we hunt buffalo, get drunk together. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!  

Memorable, especially, is the character’s name. Surely, this is where the Biden Brain grabs the “pony.” 

A bigger chunk of the Biden catchphrase surely emanates from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’s initial dramatic scenes, about a cavalry scouting party that has come upon an uncontrolled, racing stagecoach. Two members of the troop gallop after it and stop the horses (it’s beautiful filming), and then the company is seen returning to Fort Stark with the stagecoach and its contents, including a dead government paymaster, killed courtesy of an Indian attack. Sergeant Tyree, played by Ben Johnson — who chased down the stagecoach — renders a report, which gets forensic to the officers, including Wayne’s Captain Brittles: 

Look at the clan mark on this arrow. It’s the sign of the dog. That arrow came from the bow of a Southern Cheyenne dog soldier. 

Admittedly, not “dog-faced.” We cannot account for how Biden fits the puss into his contrived putdown. Maybe he is recalling some harassed Scranton neighborhood girl whom Biden, along with brother Jim and possibly even Corn Pop, derided while they were plotting to steal other kids’ baseball cards. Sounds plausible. Still, this scene from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon makes explanatory sense for Biden’s patchwork, oft-repeated line.  

That leaves “lying.” Can you settle for “lie”? We have John Wayne’s fingerprints — or voiceprint — on a scene from another John Ford classic, The Quiet Man. At the local pub in Innisfree, Squire Danaher (played by Victor McLaglen) confronts Wayne (the American, Sean Thornton, returned to his place of birth) and infers the Duke has impure thoughts about Danaher’s sister, Mary Kate, played by Maureen O’Hara. From the scene: 

Danaher: You keep away from my sister Mary Kate. She’s not for the likes of you. . . . Why this very morn, at the back of the chapel, he took liberties that he shouldn’t. 

Thornton: I said “good morning” to her. 

Danaher: “Good morning.” Yeah, but it was “good night” that you had on your mind. 

Thornton: That’s a lie. 

Like most of the memories and boasts and brags of Amtrak’s favorite customer.  

There you have it. Lie, dog, pony, soldier, Wayne. Throw them all into a blender and you get “lying dog-faced pony soldier.” It’s missing a word or two, true, but if you warm up the Enigma Machine to decipher the components of Joe Biden’s Wayne-addled, scene-spliced movie memory, this is about as good an explanation as you are going to find. 

In conclusion, I have just one more thing to say: God save the Queen, man.