On Thursday, Special Prosecutor Robert Hur released his report. Devastating is too gentle a word. Biden willfully took, then kept, Top Secret documents illegally and in unsecure places for years. 

He shared secrets with a writer, a federal crime that earned Gen. David Petraeus a $100,000 fine and two years of probation.

And, oh, look! 

Hunter Biden, who knew nothing of natural gas but was getting $80K a month from a Ukraine gas company for having a nice last name, just happened to be living in his father’s house when those Top Secret documents were lying around unsecured in the garage, basement, and drawers.

Perhaps most damaging to Biden’s fading hopes of a second term is Hur’s description of the president’s inability to remember the dates of his vice presidency or when his own son died. Even I can remember that was in 2015 in a Maryland hospital room, not, as Joe Biden often falsely implies, during military service in Iraq. 

Age, or more accurately, the effects of advanced age, is an intractable issue for Biden, who turns 82 this year. Once, age connoted wisdom. But with so much video evidence of Biden’s incoherent rambles, mental freezes, falls, and even getting lost on stages, an overwhelming majority of voters is now seriously concerned. 

One poll found 70 percent of them in key swing states agreed that Joe Biden is “just too old to be an effective president.” Trump, who has his own intractable legal problems, is four years younger than Biden. The Republican has committed a few verbal miscues, confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, for instance. But nothing on the scale of the incumbent.

Biden reportedly exploded in a tantrum on word of the special prosecutor’s detailed statement on his intentional, illegal holding of Top Secret documents and chronic forgetfulness.

I can just picture Biden shocking aides by announcing that he was going to correct the record himself and do it immediately.

And the aides saying, "No, No, wait, sir? We can handle this for you." Because they knew, like Barack Obama and numerous other colleagues, that Joe Biden will screw up pretty much everything he touches or says. And their powers, fates, and jobs are tied to his muddled mind and dissolving career.

Biden did react publicly and angrily to the report. He declared, “My memory is fine,” and then proved it wasn't. Other than that, things went well.

Assistants have been protecting Biden from himself throughout recent years. As evidence of his foggy thinking, the powerful (alleged) leader of the free world often admits publicly that an unidentified “They” doesn’t want him to take questions or do something.

No president, certainly in modern memory, has admitted openly that he’s obeying the orders of someone else. Not recognizing that such a public admission is, in fact, evidence of his mental weakness.

Forget the election — what about dumping Biden now as unfit to remain president?

Even during the 2020 campaign, they used COVID as the convenient cover to minimize the old man’s public contacts by keeping him in his basement for very short workdays. Since then, you may have noticed, Biden has spent 40 percent of his term on vacation, where, not by coincidence, visitors and activities are not recorded.

Biden never has been a nice guy or a smart guy. He just seemed harmlessly goofy during a long Senate career built on inertia and a vice presidency that included luxury foreign trips with children and grandchildren. 

On one 2013 overnight stay in Paris, Biden and his entourage ran up a $585,000 bill and a half-million more taxpayer dollars for one night in London. Their mini-bars must have been maxi.

Signs of Biden’s failing mind became apparent to those with clear eyes and no ambitions for White House jobs back in 2019-20. Biden calling questioners nonsense derogatory names, yelling at and lecturing radio hosts, mistaking Iowa for Ohio, calling on dead people.

Voters then seemed more disturbed by Donald Trump’s turmoil and mean Tweets. And his love for media attention and ample access gave them many occasions to witness that.

Joe Biden’s failing faculties have been failing faster and more frequently in recent months. With virtually every public appearance, RedState contributors have chronicled Biden’s steady stream of gaffes, fables, lies, and mental freezes, even when reading from notes.

So bad did Biden’s health and behavior look that 14 months ago, one of my favorite pundits raised the provocative question of if Joe Biden could even make it into a second term, let alone finish it in 2029, when he’d be 86.

GOP candidate Nikki Haley has been reminding audiences ominously that a vote for Joe Biden in November is really a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, whose job approval and intelligence are even worse than Biden’s.

Harris’ frequent incomprehensible word salads, in place of any substantive policy achievements, have become laugh-rich fodder for stand-up comedians.

Prosecutors do have discretion on what cases to charge and what to let pass. Despite compelling evidence, Hur decided not to charge Biden, he said, because the president would likely appeal to a jury's sympathies:

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,

That’s a strikingly similar decision to FBI Director James Comey’s decision in 2016 to recommend against charges on Hillary Clinton for her egregious and intentional abuse of Top Secret information on unsecured emails. Clinton and Biden are both Democrats.

For a long time, mainstream media ignored obvious signs of Biden’s fraying mind, as they ignored Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop contents. But it’s all out now and from an official source.

The damaging revelations can be spun and criticized all the way to Nov. 5, but not ignored. And every denial or even mention is a sticky-note reminder of all of Biden’s mental failings for anyone who sees it.

It’s tempting but unwise in politics to assert what you are not. Recall Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” Biden hastily called the disastrous rebuttal news conference to claim his memory is excellent, then confused the presidents of Egypt and Mexico.

Just as his four trials do not seem to affect Republicans’ views of Trump’s candidacy, it seems unlikely these disturbing revelations by a special prosecutor will derail Biden’s primary bid for renomination at the August party convention in Chicago.

That would seem to suggest the country has become a collection of political tribes with members holding stout fealty to their chief, regardless of outside allegations or party ideology. Or regardless of what’s best for the country.

It’s always dangerous to make political predictions. Recall how the 2015 "Hollywood Access" tape doomed Trump’s political career forever. But this year, you easily could imagine in the end, voters facing this choice between:

• A loudmouth, arrogant narcissist facing 91 criminal charges who presided over a strong job market, no new foreign military adventures, tax cuts, energy independence, and foreign adversaries held at bay in puzzlement over his tough exterior and unpredictability or,
• An even more unlikable, older senior who shuffles and mumbles, who ignited the invisible tax of historic inflation by wild spending, consciously opened the southern border to more than 9.2 million illegal aliens (two million more than Nicaragua’s entire population), killed energy independence, had no response to Russia downing a U.S. drone in international air space and a week-long aerial balloon Chinese espionage mission across the entire country. 

And whose family faces documented questions about suspicious money transfers of large sums to them from China.

Not exactly a Founding Father-like choice. 

I have suspected in recent months that Biden’s melting mind would prevent his nomination. That would be a major mess, dumping an incumbent or convincing him to quit and likely elevating his partner of dubious intelligence. 

With little to sell about Biden, his campaign and PAC will now launch an advertising blitz to distract attention by attacking Trump nonstop. Obama did a similar job on Mitt Romney in 2012 before the Republican got public campaign money. It worked.

History reminds that postwar presidents who abandon reelection bids (Lyndon Johnson 1968 and Harry Truman 1952, both Democrats) condemn their party to two consecutive terms of Republicans in the White House.

It would take something dramatic to alter our country’s political plight right now – Trump getting disqualified somehow through legal outcomes and accepting it, or Biden dropping out voluntarily or otherwise. I recently outlined one possible scenario involving Michelle Obama.

The convoluted possibilities of this Leap Year’s politics would be more entertaining than Super Bowl ads — if only our nation’s security and near future were not at stake.