Is President Joe Biden “an elderly man struggling to maintain his faculties?”

That’s one of the unkinder — or at least blunter — takeaways social media had after Wednesday night’s CNN presidential town hall in the Cincinnati area where Biden pushed vaccination, his spending plans, gun control and the impression this definitely wasn’t the guy who should be leading the free world.

Two clips in particular seemed to sum up the general atmosphere of the night. In the first, Biden struggled when asked about when vaccines would be available for children under 12.

“And the question is whether or not we should be in a position where you are — why can’t the experts say we know that this virus is, in fact — is, is, is going to be — or, excuse me — we, we, we know why all the drugs approved are not temporarily approved, but permanently approved,” Biden said.

“That’s underway, too. I expect that to occur quickly.”

In another, Biden began by talking about vaccine hesitancy and ended up babbling about men on the moon and “whether those aliens are here or not.”

For context, before the clip, Biden was addressing who you go to when you want the answer to a nagging question: “Or, you know — or, or, or, or, or the mom and dad, or, or, or, or the neighbor or when you go to church or when you’re — now, I, I, I, I really mean it. There are trusted interlocutors,” Biden said.

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“Think of the people, if, if your kid wanted to find out whether or not there were — there’s a man on the moon or whatever, you know, something, or, you know, whether those aliens are here or not, you know, who are the people they talk to beyond the kids who love talking about it?”

Sure, yeah, whatever.

It wasn’t an hour full of that, which was a shame. As a person who genuinely enjoys auto racing, I’ve never known what it’s like to watch NASCAR for the crashes. Thanks to Joe Biden town halls, I can now roughly grok the experience — a whole lot of tedium punctuated by a few glorious outbursts of smoke-shrouded screeching and crunching of metal.

There’s a downside to entertaining yourself thusly, however. In NASCAR, depending on what happens, someone could get hurt. In the town halls, no matter what happens, Biden’s still the leader of the free world when it’s over.

That sobering thought led conservative pundit Todd Starnes to note that Biden seemed to be “an elderly man struggling to maintain his faculties.”

“Are we all just going to ignore what we saw on CNN tonight – an elderly man struggling to maintain his faculties on national television?” Starnes tweeted.

Tom Elliott, impresario of video clip provider Grabien, managed to go viral with this two-word caption to Biden’s first rambling answer: “Crushing it.”

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Political strategist Caleb Hull’s take: “This guy is our president and can’t even complete a sentence.”

Podcaster Dave Rubin: “How was Don Lemon’s follow up question not, ‘Joe, are you OK?’”

GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York: “Is this for real? And the media will continue to fawn and look the other way.”

Liberals might be tempted to rationalize Wednesday night’s performance away thusly:

Sorry, no. This had nothing to do with Joe Biden’s stuttering. Yes, Biden has a stutter, and that’s not what anyone is making fun of. He’s had it for the entirety of his public life. What we’re seeing now wasn’t Joe Biden in 1971, 1991 or 2011, however.

Sure, he would say dumb things then, and wholly unrelated to his stutter at that. (Tell me, was stuttering responsible for the time he told an Indian-American man “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent” back in 2006? Does stuttering make you prone to stereotyping? Where’s the link to a speech impediment there, keyboard warriors?)

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At least you knew he was saying something, though, and the frequency was rare enough you could just shrug it off.

Those gaffes happen more frequently now — and it’s not just gaffes like Dunkin’ Donuts-level stereotyping, although that still happens.

Now we can’t even tell what he’s saying. I’m not sure Don Lemon knew, and I’m certain our president didn’t. He sounded like — well, “an elderly man struggling to maintain his faculties.” Todd Starnes had it right.

Thanks to the presidential limo, at least we don’t have to worry about him driving his car, but now we have to concern ourselves with the fact he’s driving the country. If you like watching NASCAR for the crashes, I suppose, you’re in for a real treat.

Shame he’s going to be putting the stars and stripes into the retaining wall quite a bit for the next few years.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.