I tried watching Biden's 60 Minute interview, and I kind of pity both him and his handlers. It was difficult to watch and they need to stop putting this man and his family through this. I mean, getting him into office all Weekend At Bernie's style when he had a great pandemic-level excuse to avoid public appearances is one thing, but propping him up at this point, two years in and fading fast... has gotta be extra-taxing for everyone involved.
The first question out the gate was on the subject it deserved to be on... inflation.
Now... if I was advising Biden and obviously knew it would come up, there would be plenty I'd stress he say. You know... This is a global phenomenon, not US specific. Our dollar is actually stronger than other currencies that were hit by similar issues. There were constraints to the supply chain largely outside of our control, due to the pandemic and government responses to it outside of the federal US government. Some of the things impacting inflation now were set into motion months and months ago. I'd point out fed efforts to taper off it's balance sheet and raise rates, and stress how difficult a balancing act it's dual mandate requires. Point out correctly that the President doesn't have full control over the phenomenon. Hell... I'd lie and say the "inflation reduction act" will actually reduce inflation and hasn't had time to do it's green magic or whatever.
Instead, he said something along the lines of... 'I know we're at 40 year highs in inflation and have broken records nearly every month of this year, but last month wasn't all that much worse than the month before, if you think about it, so that's good.'
He's been President for two years. If his argument is, as it mostly has been elsewhere, that all the bad things under his watch are the fault of the last guy and all the good things are stuff him and his party are responsible for, I get that that's standard politics. The buck has never really stopped at the Presidential office. But he didn't even have enough energy for that.
But yeah... His treatment was indistinguishable from what it would have been if the DNC owned a network directly. They could visibly see him confused and faltering and seemed to be doing everything shy of taking him by the hand and reminding him of his lines.