Well, it looks like the American people won’t be getting their wish for a competent president who gives a damn anytime soon.

Even if Joe Biden loses the election next November, we still have over a year of this creepy old dotard in the Oval Office, unless he misses a (literal) step and we end up with the vapidly obnoxious Kamala Harris in charge. In either case, competence is not something we have right now. What we have right now is a perky and cringe-inducing First Lady who is pulling the old man’s strings for her own benefit, and this increasingly frail and inappropriate old man who is president of the United States.

So Jill took Joe to the Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C., where she read books to the kids – among them Ezra Jack Keats’ classic The Snowy Day, and ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. This is supposed to be a nice little photo op, where Biden’s image as a kindly old grandpa gets a little burnishing (since the entire Christmas stockings for the grandchildren scheme was ditched after the debacle of the granddaughter he wouldn’t acknowledge until she was nearly five because Hunter got his dick in a twist). And I’m sorry, but Joe Biden literally has no idea what to do with himself while she reads. He is just fidgeting and smiling weirdly, as if he really doesn’t know why he’s there, but he is in a room full of kids and this is the only Christmas present he wanted. Barf. But once Jill is done reading, creepy Grandpa Joe acquires a target – AND ASKS A KID TO SIT IN HIS LAP. Fortunately, the boy ignores that request, but that doesn’t mean that Joe isn’t keeping a hand on the kid the whole time he is talking.

As Ben Bartee put it on PJ Media:

Imagine being one of Brandon’s handlers: all you need from your charge is ten minutes maximum of semi-normal behavior per day for his brief public appearances. The wife will read the book. His job (is) to sit there quietly, not look too creepy, and polish things off with a few niceties — a protocol which you go over in detail once he’s properly medicated and his eyes are open. But even that is too much to ask for, and when things go south, you get blamed.

Joe Biden’s image as an empathetic family man has taken a horrible hit during 2023, as the extent of family shell companies and “personal loans” have continued to trickle into the news, along with the horrific optics of his initial “no comment” on the Maui wildfires and the excuses for not making Hunter man up to care for his own daughter. As a result, the kids at the Children’s National Hospital get dragged out for the double whammy of Christmas goodwill and making the Bidens look like kindly grandparents who will read stories to sick kids (and then maybe Grandma Jill will make everyone breakfast tacos!).

Except that the mask is off, and everyone knows that Joe Biden and the entire Biden connection is full of entitled and venal people, who have only been concerned about bringing in enough money to keep bankrolling the lavish lifestyle that the entire extended family has learned to enjoy at the munificent hand of Joe. A lot of Democrats are beginning to look for a way to exit Joe Biden right off the national stage – which is why the not-so-good news is starting to drop, and we are now learning that the Biden White House was hoping to keep the entire Chinese spy balloon incident out of the news – and away from Congress.

The spy balloon exposed an increasingly brazen China’s competitive advances miles above the Earth and brought the most critical relationship in the world to one of its lowest points in recent history.

Nearly a year later, U.S. relations with China have not fully recovered and officials from the two nations have apparently not discussed the incident in detail. And an American effort to create global norms in unregulated spaces above the Earth has largely stalled.

Administration officials at first hoped to conceal the balloon’s existence from the public, and from Congress, according to multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” said a former senior U.S. official briefed on the balloon incident.

A senior Biden administration (sic) denied that there was an attempt to keep the balloon secret. “To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking” the official said, referring to intelligence gathering on the balloon. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”

SUUUUUUURE. It might seem like an eternity ago, but remember that both sides of the aisle were well and truly pissed that the Biden administration had not bothered to tell Congress about the spy balloon until the media spotted it and blew the lid off the story. The fact that NBC is willing to run a story that points out the Biden team’s attempt to keep the story quiet until it was too late, is just one of the most recent signs that a lot of Democrats are looking for a way to offload the old man.

And Creepy Old Joe, grinning at a crowd of children like he’s been handed a platter of fresh meat, while Jill reads a story next to him, isn’t going to help matters at all.

Sorry, kids. You really didn’t deserve that Christmas present. And stay off the old man’s lap at all costs.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click