A question an increasing number of voters are asking these days is a perfectly reasonable one: Who the hell is running the country right now?
In looking at President Biden’s schedule just last week alone, the answer to that basic question is as clear as Jersey’s swamps: On Tuesday, the 81-year-old delivered brief remarks on the Senate’s passage of a supplemental agreement.
When reporters attempted to ask questions afterward, Biden said he had to run but promised to take questions Wednesday or Thursday.
That never happened, of course, and not because Biden had a stacked itinerary to contend with.
But here’s something more disconcerting: The commander in chief received Tuesday’s daily intelligence brief not in the morning but at 2:45 p.m.
Maybe he thinks our enemies like to sleep in Tuesdays.
Or worse, perhaps it’s the president who needs additional snooze time.
Either way, it’s beyond unacceptable, especially given that the world is increasingly on fire and our border is wide open for terrorists to enter. And they have.
On Wednesday and Thursday, it was lather, rinse and repeat: no events on the schedule while Biden received the daily brief at 1 p.m. and 11:15 a.m. respectively.
And Friday, Biden traveled to East Palestine, Ohio, to deliver remarks more than a year after a toxic train derailment sparked serious health fears among residents.
The president then flew directly to Delaware for yet another long weekend at one of his multimillion-dollar homes.
This exhausting work ethic comes on the heels of special counsel Robert Hur’s devastating report stating Biden only avoided being charged because he “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Ouch.
The report also shared Biden couldn’t remember when his time as vice president began or ended and wasn’t even close to remembering what year his son Beau died (2015) despite reportedly broaching the topic himself.
The observation Biden is too old and too far gone mentally for office is nothing new: A recent ABC News poll shows 86% of Americans think Biden doesn’t have the mental fitness for another term.
For the White House, it’s a lose-lose situation.
If his handlers put him in front of the press without a teleprompter to guide him, it’s cleanup on aisles 5, 17 and 22.
If they hide him from the public, he looks weak and can’t get his message out directly during an election year in which he’s trailing Donald Trump in almost every swing state.
And Biden isn’t a fine wine who will only get better with age but more like cottage cheese left out in the sun.
We’ve likely all seen this with an older family member.
The deterioration will continue.
There won’t be sudden improvement.
It’ll be impossible to put Humpty Dumpty back together in voters’ minds.
Biden hasn’t done a TV interview with any news outlet since October.
He held exactly three solo press conferences in 2023.
For context, Trump held 35 during his final year in office.
This election year, we have an octogenarian president who keeps insisting he is the only man for the job yet acting like an absentee landlord of the country he’s supposed to lead.
Prices for food, rent, gas and heating are still way too high for Americans to afford without dipping into their savings.
Credit-card debt has eclipsed $1 trillion, an all-time high.
The border is open and essentially lawless. Budgets in cities like New York are collapsing under the weight of an unsustainable number of illegal immigrants being taken care of on the taxpayer dime.
Crime is driving Americans out of blue cities across the country to states like Florida, Texas and Tennessee.
There’s no COVID to hide behind this time.
There is also no hiding from a record that has Biden polling lower than any of the last seven presidents at this stage of his presidency.
You want another four years, Mr. President?
Perhaps start acting like you really do.
Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist and a Fox News contributor.