After One of the Wildest Weeks in American History, It Really Might Be Joever

If you pitched this past week as an episode of The West Wing to me, I would have permanently blinded myself from rolling my eyes all the way into the back of my head. First, we open with a press conference at NATO that is positioned as a way to save an aged Joe Biden’s flailing presidency, because of course Aaron Sorkin would believe the ultimate test of a Democratic politician in the 21st century is a media appearance centered around a 20th century institution.

A defiant American president opens by calling the Ukranian president by the name of his Russian invader, and then in the Q&A portion, he calls his current Vice President by the name of his opponent in the presidential race. The rest of the press conference is strong enough, but his aides can be seen off to the side, shaking their heads as they look at the instant polling proving the gaffes are the public’s takeaway from yet another disastrous appearance for a man whose polls are plunging to the depths of the Mariana Trench.

Come Saturday, around ten percent of the Democratic House caucus has called for the president to halt his campaign for reelection. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has a “blunt” private conversation with President Biden where he tells him he cannot win and will cost the Democrats both the House and Senate, while reportedly another fifty Democrats were about to publicly call on Biden to drop out if not for history unfolding at the exact same time in Bethel, Pennsylvania.

Cut to a Secret Service agent spotting a young man acting weird at 5:10 p.m. local time, and alerting the rest of the agents to his presence. By 6:10 p.m., former President Trump would begin his speech on stage. Two minutes later, as the Secret Service scrambled to find a security threat they identified and lost track of, a bullet would whizz by (through?) Trump’s ear, injuring him in the process. Seven more shots would ring out, injuring two people and killing one, before a seasoned sniper dramatically kills 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks with one shot. In violation of all Secret Service protocols, Trump boldly poses on stage with blood on his cheek and ear, telling his supporters to “fight” in one of the most iconic images in American history. Conspiracy theories would soon abound, while Trump’s autocratic following positions itself for a takeover.

Lest our audience assume this story would follow the path of least resistance, surprise! The shooter is a registered Republican, and the Trump campaign gave his father a 0.99 out of 1 likely gun owner score in their internal voter data. Meanwhile, just outside the Republican National Convention, people were giving away the same gun that nearly assassinated their president.

One would think this storyteller would introduce a calmer scene to guide us from the violent climax, but nay, we are being force-fed a firehose of low-hanging fruit juice in this episode, as the embattled current president now has COVID! Are you kidding me? Who let this script get this far before slapping some sense into the writer’s room?

One week out from the NATO press conference that may have well as been a year ago, we seem to be cruising into the end of this surreal episode where the president really may drop out of the 2024 race, as Axios reports today:

Several top Democrats privately tell us the rising pressure of party congressional leaders and close friends will persuade President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.

Why it matters: The 81-year-old president, now self-isolating with COVID, remains publicly dug in. But privately he’s resigned to mounting pressure, bad polls, and untenable scrutiny making it impossible to continue his campaign, the Democrats tell us.

There’s even a Sorkin-esque quote in the report.

“His choice is to be one of history’s heroes, or to be sure of the fact that there’ll never be a Biden presidential library,” one of the president’s close friends told us. “I pray that he does the right thing. He’s headed that way.”

I have run out of adjectives to use for our current political situation. My brain has pivoted to trying to mash words together to try to describe our new indescribable status quo. This past week has been an object lesson in why political prognostication is such a crapshoot. After Biden’s disastrous debate, it seemed like that was all that anyone would talk about for the rest of this year, but fun fact: that actually took place in 1974. We’re in the future now where a bullet-dodging Trump is the new norm and it’s only July. There are a little bit less than four months left in this madness, and where this hacky TV show goes next is anyone’s guess.