THE SHOW NOTES: Biden's Bad Thursday

Welcome! A PGA pro was forced to withdraw from a tournament because he missed his tee time.

MUST WATCH: Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin was released last night.

HEADLINE: More voters are rating Trump's presidency as 'better than expected' in hindsight - NBC

QUOTE: "Look, I'm a Biden supporter. And I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours and wet the bed. This is terrible for Democrats. And anybody with a functioning brain knows that." Paul Begala on CNN - Twitter

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🚨 MUST READ: Timeline of Biden’s Bad Thursday

The Special Counsel appointed to handle Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents released a damning report yesterday confirming the President's guilt but stopping short of recommending criminal charges. What followed was nothing short of a disastrous evening for the White House.

Details: Special Counsel Robert Hur claimed that Biden willfully retained classified documents from his time in the Obama administration and divulged handwritten notes of highly sensitive pieces of military intelligence to a ghostwriter for his memoir. Here’s the quote from Hur:

Mr. Biden’s lapses in attention and vigilance demonstrate why former officials should not keep classified information unsecured at home and read them aloud to others.

🚨 Bad to worse: Hur’s exhaustive 345-page report detailed Biden’s declining mental capabilities in part by citing a five-hour interview over two days between the President and Hur’s team that did not go well. On multiple occasions, Biden forgot key details including the time frame he was Vice President, key details about foreign leaders, and when his son died. Here’s the quote

He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.

The punchline: The report justified no criminal charges because the special counsel’s team deemed Biden to be too old and senile, not because they presumed he was innocent.

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

🚨 Worse to MUCH WORSE: Following Hur’s report, the White House announced the President would make a televised statement at 7:45 PM with no additional context. Biden came out and fumbled his way through criticizing the Special Counsel’s report, blamed Israel for going too far in Gaza, and capped off the evening by confusing the President of Egypt for the President of Mexico. Watch:

🚨 PUNCHLINE: The President’s denouncement of the reporter and the questions about his memory suggest Biden would prefer to get indicted. The media is so upset someone finally said publicly the Emperor has no clothes that they are attacking the Special Prosecutor’s bad manners. CNN allowed back on its house masturbator, Jeffrey Toobin, to criticize the report. It’s the best the press can do after covering for Biden for four years. God forbid they admit the truth now.

CNN: Elie Honig on CNN points out that Biden denied sharing key documents with his ghostwriter despite this fact being listed in the second sentence of the report. Watch:

Meltdown: The fine folks at MSNBC are in complete meltdown trying to justify Biden’s innocence while attacking the Special Counsel. Watch:

The Goal for Super Bowl Ads This Year: Don’t Offend Anyone

This year’s Super Bowl ads will variously appeal to America’s sweet tooth, plead for tolerance and seek redemption for Bud Light. But most will share one thing in common: marketers’ even deeper-than-usual desire to avoid offending anyone.

Their supersized trepidation is inspired largely by the example of Bud Light, which suffered a damaging consumer boycott last year after its social-media promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The brand’s marketing chief exited in the drama.

“It has usually been that when a brand gets into trouble like that, it recovers fairly quickly and people forget about it and move on,” said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “The Bud Light situation has been so different because the brand has been hit very hard and it hasn’t really bounced back.” 

Full story at The Wall Street Journal (paywall).

Trending news:

• Airline to start weighing passengers voluntarily ahead of takeoff - The Hill

• In possible test of federal labor law, Georgia could make it harder for some workers to join unions - AP

• DUMB: Hawaii Supreme Court quotes "The Wire" in ruling on gun rights: "The thing about the old days, they the old days" - CBS

• Colin Jost to headline the White House correspondents' dinner in April - NBC

• It took cinematic levels of dysfunction for Democrats to finally get aggressive on their border strategy - Politico

• Shaky commercial loans threaten a new regional bank crisis - SEMAFOR

• Gastrointestinal outbreak hits luxury cruise ship headed from SF to Hawaii - SFGate

• Another ‘Great Retirement’ Wave Hits the US After Stocks Rally - Bloomberg (paywall)

• Parents Are Highly Involved in Their Adult Children’s Lives, and Fine With It - New York Times (paywall)

Market snapshot: