ABC put out a tweet Saturday, linking to a story about the November 2022 election and Joe Biden–then they deleted it. But it caused a lot of consternation, and you’ll see why.

Hi @ABC! Why did you delete this? pic.twitter.com/3v543vUKBv

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 18, 2022

Multiple other outlets still have the tweet up, so people are likely to see it on local TV stations across the country. Here’s a sample.

Democrats are going to hold onto the House after November's midterm elections. They will pick up as many as four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority and overcoming internal dissent that has helped stifle their agenda. https://t.co/Ug9Mr68gqN

— News4JAX (@wjxt4) June 19, 2022

Democrats are going to hold onto the House after November's midterm elections. They will pick up as many as four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority and overcoming internal dissent that has helped stifle their agenda.https://t.co/Vr6PyEzHHA

— KOMO News (@komonews) June 19, 2022

Turns out it traces to an AP story, which is why it was being tweeted by multiple networks that often run AP stories. When you go to the story, the first paragraph mirrors the tweet.

Democrats are going to hold onto the House after November’s midterm elections. They will pick up as many as four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority and overcoming internal dissent that has helped stifle their agenda.

Now, they follow it with the following paragraph.

As the challenges confronting President Joe Biden intensify, his predictions of a rosy political future for the Democratic Party are growing bolder. The assessments, delivered in speeches, fundraisers, and conversations with friends and allies, seem at odds with a country that he acknowledged this week was “really, really down,” burdened by a pandemic, surging gas prices and spiking inflation.

The first paragraph is a prediction by Joe Biden, although they don’t explicitly say that until much further down into the story, many paragraphs later.

“I think there are at least four seats that are up for grabs that we could pick up in the Senate,” the president told a recent gathering of donors in Maryland. “And we’re going to keep the House.”

Can we talk about not only how this is poorly written when you don’t have that information in the first paragraph, but also how bad it is to put out tweets like that without context, making it seem as though they are statements of fact, not a prediction?

The other part of this is how delusional Joe Biden is — if he thinks this is true (unless he knows something the rest of us don’t about the nature of the election). There’s no doubt that he wants to project an optimistic outlook, but when you aren’t living in reality, then you’re not approaching the problem correctly–and that’s been the problem with the whole of Joe Biden’s time in office. Except, this time, that living in unreality is about to come back and bite them all in the fanny.

We’re already seeing the start of the wave, with things like Mayra Flores’ win in the 34th District in Texas, a district that has been held by Democrats forever, and progressive D.A. Chesa Boudin being tossed out on recall in San Francisco.

The real story is in the response to Biden’s delusion, later in the AP article.

Biden meant Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with potential longer shots in North Carolina or Florida possibly representing No. 4. Some aides admit that assessment is too optimistic. They say the president is simply seeking to fire up his base with such predictions. One openly laughed when asked if it was possible that Democrats could pick up four Senate seats.

The party’s chances of maintaining House control may be bleaker.

Indeed.