So, Why Did He Say, "No Comment" Yesterday?

This is another of my posts on the futility of trying to explain Joe Biden's behavior with a medical diagnosis that nobody's qualified to make. The big story yesterday was briefly

President Joe Biden reportedly said he had “no comment” when asked Sunday about the rising death toll from the devastating Hawaii fires.

However, of all the takes i've seen on this episode, almost nobody has suggested it's because Joe has any sort of medical condition (the exception might be Judge Jeanine Pirro, who mentioned the 25th Amendment on Fox). But it seems fairly plain that when Joe made the remark, he had full situational awareness that the was addressing a group of reporters, and to say "no comment" in that environment would normally be completely appropriate. He didn't appear to be hallucinating or in any way distracted. Nor did he seem to be addressing people whom he thought were present but weren't.

The most we can say is that Joe might have been unaware of how people might have reacted to the precise situation on which he refused to comment, namely, the record death toll of the Maui wildfires. People qjuickly called it "cold", and the New York Post called him "Heartless Joe". A reasonable interpretation might be to invoke the Dunning-Kruger Effect, simply to say that like an unfunny standup comic, he's unable to read a room, but he's nevertheless in that room, and he knows it.

But this leaves out another factor, which is that he's a politician of many decades experience, and he must almost certainly know how to read a room, or at least a room that matters. If he's meeting with people who might give him money, we must assume he'll avoid gaffes or unintentional slights, and he'll make every effort to keep them happy. But if he's in a room with people he thinks are unimportant, or whom he thinks he can easily manipulate, he won't bother.

This is a side to Joe's character that's becoming increasingly visible, and I think it gives an insight into how he plans to handle developments over the Hunter story going imto the 2024 campaign. As of yestereday, accoring to the Washington Examiner,

The White House has largely avoided publicly answering questions from reporters for more than two weeks as legal headaches for President Joe Biden continue to mount.

Biden started August vacationing at his family home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, before briefly returning to Washington, D.C., on Monday, Aug. 7. The president did hold a public event that day, a ceremony honoring the 2022 World Series champion Houston Astros, but the White House did not hold a briefing before Biden departed for Arizona.

He then traveled to New Mexico and Utah later in the week, and though the president returned to Washington, D.C., Thursday evening, the White House again chose not to hold a briefing on Friday.

The last briefing with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took place on July 27, the day before Biden took an economy-focused trip to Maine.

Jean-Pierre has held two 10-15 minute gaggles aboard Air Force One over the past two-plus weeks, with one occurring on the July 28 flight to Maine and the second occurring on August 7 on the flight to Arizona.

In this, we may assume that he thinks his own interests coincide with the interests of his handlers, the less opportunity he has to make any statement, the better. But let's not forget that he also thinks he's smarter even than his handlers. When he said "no comment" when he was asked about a Maui death toll likely to rise well over 100, he was flipping the bird at the public and the press, but he was also smirking at his own staff: See? I'm just doin' what you told me to do! How do you like that!

So I think he's lookinig at the reactions of "cold" and "heartless Joe" with secret satisfaction. He's the most powerful man in the world, and there's nothing they can do about it.

I think we also need to look at this in the context of Democrats who worry about things like third-party challenges or the effect of the Hunter scandals on Joe's 2024 electability. He's just going to flip everyone the bird and run on the basis that he's the most powerful man in the world.

I don't think anyhone will be able to persuade him to change his mind about running in 2024. He's the most powerful man in the world, and doggone it, he should be.