Wait a sec. That’s our line!

That’s what we said to the left’s riot-apologists amid the “fiery but mostly peaceful” reaction to George Floyd’s murder.

I suddenly hear Christopher Guest’s voice in “Spinal Tap”: He did a twist on it.

This is the second clip I’ve posted today in which Biden sounds uncharacteristically forceful, on-message, and lucid. Watching this, you’d say he seems much closer to age 90 than to 100.

Don’t quit before the end or else you’ll miss him take a dig at Lindsey Graham that’s justified, unfortunately.

President Biden: "Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress; don't tell me you support law enforcement if you won't condemn what happened on the 6th…You can't be pro law enforcement and pro insurrection." pic.twitter.com/CfcKwqhj8d

— CSPAN (@cspan) August 30, 2022

What’s gotten into Sleepy Joe to make him not so sleepy? Has he been buoyed by the Democratic resurgence in midterm polling? Is he still exuberant over the shocking revival and passage of Build Back Better? Are the orderlies trying a new medication on him?

Did the “Dark Brandon” memes inspire him? He’s seen them, you know.

Maybe he’s just legit pissed at the rise of “semi-fascism” in certain precincts of the right and is getting an energy boost from it. No wonder his staff wants to seize the moment and tackle the subject in a primetime address before he sinks back into senescence.

Whatever the answer, I think it’s basic good politics for him to at least try to turn the issue of law and order around on Republicans. There are too many bleeding hearts on the left for voters to ever think of Democrats as the party of law enforcement but displays of indignation like the one above might help neutralize the GOP’s advantage on the issue before November. An Ipsos poll published a few weeks ago found that Republicans’ lead over Democrats on handling crime was their biggest on any of the 11 issues tested. And in April Gallup found that the share of people who say they worry about crime a “great deal” had tied the share who said so in 2016 for the largest number of the past 20 years. Concerns about crime have been buried in the news cycle under emerging concerns like inflation, gas prices, Ukraine, and abortion, but it’s still out there among voters bubbling below the surface. Which is dangerous for Democrats.

So here’s Biden trying to go on offense about it. If he can convince voters that the issue is a wash between the parties rather than a clear reason to favor Republicans, he’ll have done his job. Although, as others have noted, this is a strange week for him to start lecturing others about following the law:

Hilarious. The legislative agenda is a threat to the rule of law, but Biden circumventing the legislature to unilaterally spend a trillion dollars to buy votes is just upholding the rule of law appears not. https://t.co/CyEZhMJpbR

— AG (@AGHamilton29) August 30, 2022

The fact that he stood up for the FBI in the clip may also have a strategic motive. (It must, since neither side of the aisle has much personal affection for the FBI.) Biden has mostly avoided commenting on the merits of the DOJ’s probe of Trump for retaining classified documents, knowing that the more he says about it the more convincing Trump will be when he claims it’s driven by partisan politics. But by aligning himself with the FBI against the people threatening the bureau, he gets to remind voters of the probe without explicitly mentioning it. And all of the polling so far has found that Americans on balance believe that the search of Mar-a-Lago was justified and that defunding the FBI would be dumb:

Some Republicans have called for defunding the FBI, but it’s not a candidate position that finds favor with most rank-and-file Republicans.
Although Reps are relatively more likely to back such a candidate than are Dems or Indies. pic.twitter.com/XaRAj83PIf

— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) August 30, 2022

Here’s the latest on what may have been stashed away in the compound’s storage room, which gets cringier by the day:

Trump has bragged to some of his closest associates — both during and after his time in the White House — that he knew illicit details about the love life of French President Emmanuel Macron, two people with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. And the former president even claimed that he learned about some of this dirt through “intelligence” he had seen or been briefed on, these sources say.

It’s not clear whether the Macron-related document the FBI seized during the raid had anything at all to do with the French president’s personal life. Nor is it clear whether the information on Macron seized from Mar-a-Lago is derived from U.S. intelligence collection or even classified.

But the mere revelation of its existence triggered a trans-Atlantic freakout, according to two other sources familiar with the situation. And Trump’s prior talk about Macron’s allegedly “naughty” ways that “[not] very many people know” only intensified those concerns.

Anything Biden can do to get Trump back in the conversation before the midterms is worth doing, including ranting about January 6 at an event devoted to crime. “Imagine a world without Trump,” writes James Antle. “The focus would be where Democrats least want it — on their and Biden’s performance in office. It won’t be on rehashing past controversies rather than debating current events.” Oh well.

There may be one other reason Biden wanted to get his spiel here on camera and on the record. If Lindsey Graham’s threat-as-prophesy should come true and some of Trump’s fans end up rioting because he’s charged, Democrats will use that to the hilt in the final stretch of the campaign. Biden might have been trying here to get people thinking about it in case it happens, expecting “told you so” points for the Dems from voters if it does.