Dazed and confused.

The apparent cognitive decline of President Biden has dominated much of the coverage of the race in the past 10 days. In two separate incidents, the president appeared confused and apparently needed help in knowing where to go and what to do next at public events.

The first such incident to attract attention was at the G7 Summit in Italy last Thursday. The president wandered off from a group of world leaders and had to be pulled back by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Two days later, at a star-studded Hollywood fundraiser hosted by George Clooney and Julia Roberts, the president appeared to freeze – his gaze fixed on the crowd for a full 10 seconds – before former president Barack Obama took him by the hand and guided him off the stage.

Former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump lost no time in calling attention to the two incidents. Here’s what he said at a campaign rally this week.

This weekend…it’s turning the United States into a total joke all over the world. First, he wandered off the G7 in Europe…the stage…he looked like he didn’t know where the hell he was, but he didn’t know where it was. He’s blaming it now on AI. He’s saying – he doesn’t know what AI is but that’s okay. Now they’re saying the media is manipulating…oh,  he’s saying the media is manipulating now. On that one I have to stick up for the media, I have to tell you. He said the media has been manipulating the pictures of him constantly not knowing where the hell he is. They’re doing just the opposite. They’re making him look better.”

The two incidents have led to questions from the White House press corps and the need for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to come to President Biden’s defense. Here she is speaking on MSNBC earlier this week.

I think there is so much misinformation, disinformation, as we’ve been talking about. You talked about the video, the president wandering, and it’s not true, right, the president wasn’t wandering, he was talking to a parachuter that was right in front of him. And what you saw is the Republican Party really manipulating what was being said and what was being seen by the American people. And it’s also very insulting to the folks who – the viewers who are watching it. And so, we believe we have to call that out. We’ve been calling it cheap fakes. That is something that came from – directly from the media outlets in calling it that.”

When we started our coverage of Decision 2024 in the late fall of last year, we promised that this campaign season would be like none we have ever seen.

With one candidate being widely viewed as suffering severe mental decline and the other facing sentencing for conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, we believe it’s safe to say we’re delivering on that promise.