“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

And that quote, allegedly ad-libbed, is the only thing being reported that President Handsome Joe Biden said. The rest of the speech was apparently not heard by the press. Go figure.

Those of us who’ve been paying attention probably already felt the call-back to the Reagan era when White House Aides were frequently called to aisle 6 for clean-up. The 4th Reich had so many errors from the Liar-in-Chief that the Press ignored them and his own aides were too afraid of his temper to try to correct him.

So this fainting couch coverage from our Failed Political Press ™ seems very over the top to me. Some examples:

• Tiger Beat’s email thingie:

Biden’s 9-word ad-lib that set the world ablaze

• Axios’ email thingie:

Biden’s worldwide walkback

• The WaPo:

Biden sparks global uproar with nine ad-libbed words about Putin

The thing is, what if it was a strategy and not a gaffe? What if —and I’m spitballing here— what if the strategic goal is to lob that into the public sphere but with credible deniability? You can set an agenda without declaring an agenda.

We are not negotiating with Russia, Ukraine is. And Putin is not negotiating and never has been. So anyone who thinks that Russia will be less likely to negotiate has not been paying attention.

But who was listening? Probably the Russian people and Russian generals who know that in the end that they will be the ones negotiating an end to this thing.

I imagine that paranoid Comrade Queeg’s comically long table just got a few more leaves added to it.

Published with permission from Mock Paper Scissors.