Hello, and welcome back to My Thunderdome.
→ Biden forgetting so many words this week: I would love to be able to tell you that things are going great mentally for our president, because I am always rooting for ’Merica, but we’re all worried about one thing right now: The oval of the one in the Oval. This week, Biden confused Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron for their dead predecessors. Twice. He said he spoke to Helmut Kohl (who died in 2017) and François Mitterrand (who died in 1996). Then, during a brief press conference, he forgot the word for Hamas. “There’s been a response from the, uh—there’s been a response from the opposition, but, um—yes, I’m sorry, from Hamas.” Now, when I was pregnant, I forgot words all the time. I threw the dogs’ leashes in the garbage and put my phone in the fridge. I forgot I wasn’t allowed to cry when the grocery store ran out of the cereal I like. But I was not president. And I’m afraid Joe Biden is not pregnant.
For the second year in a row, Biden is sitting out the pre–Super Bowl interview, a new tradition started under Barack Obama. Not because of anything wrong with Biden, his team is quick to clarify, but because Americans are tired of politics. The Biden White House just wants all Americans to enjoy the Big Game, and Sundays are for POTUS naps.
→ Special counsel says nevermind: In a Thursday evening bombshell, a Republican-appointed special counsel investigation into documents improperly held at Biden’s Delaware house decided not to prosecute him. Why? “At trial, Mr. Biden 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. . . . It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” And then there’s this: