Thursday was a bad enough day for President Joe Biden’s administration without another moment that left many wondering whether the president was mentally fit enough for the job. However, it was certainly the rotten cherry on top of a sewage sundae.

During an address on the omicron variant from the White House, Biden blanked during a 15-second stretch of the speech, leading to more questions about the president’s mental clarity.

Of course, these questions have existed since the beginning of Biden’s run for the presidency — something the media liked to ignore. Here at The Western Journal, we’ve been cataloguing Biden’s unnerving gaffes — and why they’re not just funny but indicative of a deeper concern — since the start. We’re going to keep bringing America the truth — and you can help us by subscribing.

The main takeaway of the speech by the media — and the message the White House wanted to convey — was that the White House was pushing to make “high-quality masks” available to Americans free of charge. As CNN noted, experts have warned N95 or KN95 masks might be necessary to stop the omicron variant, with cloth or surgical masks being insufficient.

“We have also helped make sure that high-quality masks are widely available, in ample supply, at affordable prices, sold online and in stores,” Biden said during the speech, according to a White House transcript. “But I know that for some Americans, a mask is not always affordable or convenient to get.”

Never mind that this was probably a bad time to be proposing free masks when the administration’s plan to send 500 million COVID tests to every American — also in the name of fighting the wave of infections from the omicron variant — has been held up. Never mind, too, that Vice President Kamala Harris’ attempts to defend the testing initiative during an interview with NBC News that aired Thursday morning were nothing short of disastrous:

The mask speech was supposed to be the bright spot in what the U.K. Daily Mail called “Biden’s 48 hours from hell.”

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Between the Supreme Court striking down most of the administration’s vaccine mandate, the apparent kiboshing of the administration’s push to invoke the nuclear option and eliminate the filibuster to push the Democrats’ voting overhaul legislation through the Senate, Harris’ risible interview, the highest inflation number in 40 years, a huge spike in new unemployment claims and a dramatic new low for President Biden in the polls — 33 percent approval, according to a Quinnipiac poll — Wednesday and Thursday had been a slow-motion nightmare for the White House.

At least the headline from the speech would be that President Biden was doing something about record numbers of COVID cases, even if that something wasn’t going to amount to much, mitigation-wise. That was the plan, anyway. Here’s what most of Twitter ending up focusing on, however:

“Now, I don’t like to, uh, uh, you know, ugh, outline the next steps we’re taking against, uh — I’d, I’d like to outline the next steps we’re taking against ova — uh, the omicron variant,” Biden said during the 14-second clip.

This didn’t inspire confidence, as you might imagine:

Moreover, at the end of the speech, he refused to take questions. This isn’t unusual for Biden, whose staff has resorted to tactics like blaring music after his remarks have ended to preclude any queries from the press. However, in this case, the question was rather pertinent: “Do you have a message for vaccinated Americans who are wondering why they should continue to restrict their activities given that your health officials say most Americans will get COVID at some point?”

“Folks, we’ll talk about that later. Let’s go,” Biden responded.

“Maybe a press conference soon, Mr. President? We look forward to that,” another reporter asked.

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“Me too,” Biden responded.

The numbers don’t bear that out, which is part of the problem. As the Daily Mail noted, Biden had only conducted five news conferences during his first year as president, by far the lowest number of any president since Ronald Reagan. In Reagan’s case, however, his six press conferences were as the result of being shot in an assassination attempt in March, just two months after his inauguration.

Biden, meanwhile, is supposedly as hale and hearty as any man who’s ever been in the White House, at least if you listen to the people around him. However, his predecessor, Donald Trump, gave 21 news conferences in his first year in office — and while Biden is dealing with a mostly simpatico press, Trump faced almost nothing but adversarial exchanges.

And why might Biden be kept from news conferences? Look at those 14 seconds on Thursday. That’s not just Biden’s stutter, and it’s not an isolated event. Not only did he look shorn of energy during the rest of the speech, he very obviously blanked for the umpteenth time and didn’t bother taking questions. If you feel comfortable that this man has access to the nuclear codes at this point, your partisanship is showing.

On a cataclysmic day for the administration, the president reminded us in just 14 seconds that, if he’s the man helming the ship at the White House, everyone had better start looking for a lifeboat — stat.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.