NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.  

Last night, the betting market odds on Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee plummeted. If he doesn’t become the nominee, this week will be pointed to as the inflection point.

Biden Can’t Fix It

The problem for President Biden and his White House isn’t the devastating special counsel report nor is it his disastrous snap press conference to prove his mental fitness; the problem for Biden is that there is nothing he can do to fix the underlying issue.  

• In the latest NBC News poll, 76% of Americans report concerns about Biden’s mental fitness — last night’s press conference violated the first rule of politics: First Do No Harm. 
• He referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico when discussing opening a border crossing for aid to Gaza, clearly confusing the border crisis and war in the Middle East. 
• He attacked the special counsel investigating his mishandling of classified documents, saying, “How in the hell dare he” for noting Biden couldn’t remember the year his son Beau died. He then held up Beau’s rosary and promptly forgot where he got it, trailing off saying, “Our Lady of …”
• We speculated last before the White House announced Biden’s 7:45 p.m. address that his only option to disprove the special counsel was a few wide-ranging TV interviews or in-depth press conferences — little did we know Biden himself would quickly prove us both right and wrong. A press conference was the chosen cure, but it only proved the special counsel’s point.

Focus on Jill 

Stay tuned: Comparisons of first lady Jill Biden to first lady Edith Wilson, who effectively took over as president after Woodrow Wilson’s stroke, are not far away — that’s bad for both Bidens.

• Our conversation Monday with Bill O’Reilly about Biden’s mental fitness proved prescient.
  • O’Reilly said, “But Joe Biden’s handlers, including his wife, who’s growing in influence … they don’t know what he’s going to say from hour to hour. They cannot put him out there, because if a tough question is lodged, nobody knows whether Biden is capable of answering it without blowing himself up.” 
• To that point, our friend Mike Allen at Axios obtained Katie Rogers’ new book “American Woman” about the first ladies and relayed this moment from a Biden press conference in 2022. Rogers writes, “(Jill Biden) had watched the news conference, and the look on her face told everyone in the room — from the president on down — that they had some explaining to do. ‘Why didn’t anyone stop that?’ she demanded.

The New York Times knew the story was coming and tried to frame the president needing the first lady’s protection as a good thing. Katie Rogers (@katierogers) writes, “Within Mr. Biden’s inner circle, no one knows how taxing the job can be more than Jill Biden, the first lady. At times, she has worked to shield him from the sort of off-the-cuff interactions with reporters that occurred on Thursday evening, when Mr. Biden veered away from scripted remarks and started answering questions.”

Bottom line: Jill Biden softball interviews might be fun for the base — as it was when she sat down with Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — but from now on, every time Jill Biden comes out without him, it only draws attention to the underlying issue. 

Thought bubble: 

• As we head into Super Bowl Weekend, where Americans will gather to eat wings, watch TV and talk, this week puts Biden’s mental fitness as the topic du jour. 
• So let’s review:
  • Sunday: At a speech in Las Vegas, Biden confused the current French president with one who died in the 1990s.
  • Tuesday: He held no public events but needed a reporter to remind him that Israel was fighting “Hamas.” 
  • Wednesday: At two separate events, Biden mentioned a time when he talked to a German leader in 2021 who had died in 2017. 
  • Thursday: Special counsel calls him “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with poor memory” and says part of the reason for not charging him is because a jury would find it hard to convict him for a crime where intent and state of mind are critical. 

Again, all of this is fixable if he could do something or anything that would put the mental fitness issue to rest. The problem is that he can’t, and every time he tries, he makes things worse. 

Adding to the problem: Last night, the White House press corp held no punches. We all forgot what that looked like and is even more worrisome for a press shop thinking of putting the president out. 

No Good Options 

Democratic strategist Paul Begala said on CNN this morning, “Look, I’m a Biden supporter. And I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours crying and wet the bed. This is terrible for Democrats, and anybody with a functioning brain knows that.”

Thought bubble: This is the result of Democrats and the media protecting Biden from even the thought of a primary challenge.

And now, Democrats couldn’t be in a worse position.

• They could double down on defending Biden’s mental fitness.
• They could move him aside for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is less popular and more polarizing than he is.
• They could have some type of primary process.
• But none of these are appealing.

California’s Wasted Rain

Evidently, at least according to The Washington Post, both California’s record drought a few years ago and now record flooding, including rivers of mud through Beverly Hills, all trace back to climate change. But the story exposes the larger problem with massive climate change initiatives pushed by the elites and paid for by everybody else: These programs exist to spend money and make people feel better rather than actually deal with the real problems.

Haley Smith reports in The Los Angeles Times, “The monster storm that hammered Southern California this week dropped billions of gallons of rain, but as much as 80% of that water was whisked into the Pacific Ocean, experts say.”

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., has an answer complete with video: “20,000 cubic feet per second released into the ocean. New storage hasn’t been built in decades.”

Call this climate theater:

• California broadly forces the spending of billions on cleaner cars, electric vehicles and solar and wind power plants all to stop emissions but does very little (or nothing) to build an aquifer system to capture and save the predicted deluge of water and refill Lakes Mead and Powell. 
• It’s a little bit like TSA making grandma take her shoes off at airport security while allowing illegal immigrants with no identification to board planes. 
• The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but reasonable people can agree no amount of recycling will stop whatever force is warming the earth. Therefore, our money and efforts would be far better spent on mitigation and nuclear power than this climate theater. 

There’s hope that maybe California is learning. 

• The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board writes in their article “A Progressive California Epiphany Over Soaring Electricity Rates” that “Democrats want to repeal the graduated income tax on electricity they passed two years ago.”

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.