Ukrainian President…Putin?

Biden's "big boy" press conference: Yesterday, President Joe Biden tried his very darndest not to have any verbal gaffes during the final session of NATO's 75th anniversary summit and the subsequent press conference. Unfortunately, the 81-year-old—who appears to be ailing from dementia, Parkinson's, or some other age-related cognitive issues, and is still reeling from his abysmal debate performance two weeks ago—was not able to pull off that feat.

"Now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin," said Biden when introducing Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country is currently being razed to the ground by Vladimir Putin. (Biden did correct himself quite quickly, saying, "Going to beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy. I am so focused on beating Putin.")

Later, a reporter asked Biden if America's standing in the world was damaged by the Putin-Zelenskyy gaffe, gesturing at the cognitive decline scandal. "Did you see any damage to our standing in my leading this conference?" retorted an indignant Biden, striking a Trumpy note. "Have you seen a more successful conference? What do you think? I thought it was the most successful conference I've attended in a long time and find me a world leader who didn't think it was."

Later, when a Reuters reporter asked Biden if he was confident in his vice president, Kamala Harris, Biden got confused for a moment. "Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she was not qualified to be president. So start there," he said.

Some people, of course, found Biden's performance good. The only trouble is that they all happen to be on the White House payroll:

As for the rest of us who aren't paid Biden shills, the performance did not instill much confidence. It did not put to rest the concerns most political observers have about Biden running for president again. He remains embroiled in crisis.

But perhaps more importantly, there remains very little most of us can do about it. Those in Biden's inner circle—which includes his family, like son Hunter, wife Jill, and sister Valerie, as well as a cadre of loyal staffers who have been with him for decades—have no incentive to give up power or to persuade Biden to call it quits. Instead, they stage-manage his performances, tightly controlling press access and feeding reporters softball questions.

One reporter, Andrea Lawful-Sanders of WURD in Philadelphia, resigned after it became public that she had used questions fed to her by Biden's press people. The Earl Ingram Show, a Wisconsin radio show that had received a list of questions from Biden's handlers prior to the interview, admitted yesterday that it had cut two chunks of the show before it aired at the behest of the Biden campaign. The total amount removed was allegedly about 16 seconds long and included a chunk in which Biden called African Americans "blacks"—precisely the type of thing that would play very poorly on social media and among the progressive left.

"I have more blacks in my administration than any other president, all other presidents combined, and in major positions, cabinet positions," said Biden at one point during the interview. The second cut was to cull odd, incoherent comments about the Central Park Five.

It's not just the campaigning, though; it's also the governing. Cabinet meetings are infrequent and members of the Cabinet say they do not know much about Biden's condition due to how rarely they see him. (The last one was on October 2, for example.)

The gatekeepers: "What Democrats need to admit to themselves is that Biden is denying them the information they need to answer that question," writes Ezra Klein in The New York Times. "Since the debate, he has done a small handful of short interviews. He called into two radio shows where the hosts would ask preapproved questions. His interview with George Stephanopoulos lasted 22 minutes. He called into 'Morning Joe,' which has been the friendliest place for him in cable news, for less than 20 minutes. He has not gone to the Hill and talked, in a lengthy and unscripted way, with either the House or Senate Democratic caucuses. It's not nearly enough."

To be clear, the questions of whether Biden can govern well and whether he can campaign well are somewhat separate, but it's through the work of campaigning that a presidential candidate convinces voters he can govern well, and Biden is denying voters the opportunity to anticipate what that might look like. Whether he's nimble, energetic, and reliable is not tangential to the governing question—these are important attributes that voters have every right to weigh. Politics is about both perception and reality. The reality may well be that Biden is strong on foreign policy particulars behind closed doors, but if the perception is that he's a weak and impotent leader, that surely matters too.

One cannot help but wonder: If we had a media more interested in attempting to reveal the truth rather than aiding and abetting the man in power, how might things be different? How much sooner might we have learned about Biden's deteriorating condition? And how much harder would it have been for his inner circle to maintain and uphold the delusion that he's a suitable candidate for another four-year term as president?

Scenes from New York: New York hotels will no longer be allowed by the government to provide tiny plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles to their guests, as of January 1. The only other nation that disrespects their tourists in this manner is California.

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