It’s impossible for even the most rabid partisan to argue that Joe Biden has wowed the country with his charisma.

Sure, a few paid Twitter accounts and the MSNBC commentariat will make that argument, but that is their job. They would try to convince you the sky was chartreuse if told to by their paymaster. But anybody who cares about their future employability or has a sense of shame will at least acknowledge that Biden’s approval is in the toilet and Americans haven’t warmed to him, even if they then argue that the considered wisdom of the country is unfair.

The Associate Press has decided that the best way to spin Biden’s inability to connect with Americans is to portray him as a consummate retail politician who fails to connect with most Americans because he is just not that great at wholesale politics. He wins people over “one hug and one selfie at a time,” not through great rhetoric.

You have to admit that it’s an interesting angle. Biden is a superb president and great politician, but he just doesn’t excel at doing the communicating with the American people thing. But honestly, you would just love him if you got to know him. Or at least if you let him smell your kids’ hair.

One handshake, one hug and one selfie at a time. If President Joe Biden could greet every American this way, longtime allies say, his approval ratings would soar.

Biden has never been at his best in big speeches, where his delivery can be stilted, his stories sometimes meandering. It’s the end of his speech that often marks the beginning of Biden’s favorite part of an event — the rope line, in the parlance of political operatives. He whirls around, scans the crowd and zeroes in on his first target for a one-on-one connection.

Yep. Biden may appear to be the president with oatmeal for brains, whose few sentient thoughts are of a child’s baby shampoo smelling hair, but if you really got to be in his presence you would find him unbearably charming. Of course, when he scans the crowd and zeroes in on his first target for a one-on-one connection it probably is a 7 year old girl with pigtails, but it’s so charming when he gropes her.

Really. They think that turning Biden into a lovable retail politician will actually resonate with anyone? He’s been around for decades, and was a prominent VP for 8 years. I think we all know who Joe Biden is.

It might be a small child — Biden likes to carry some cash so he can discretely slip kids a few dollars and encourage them to buy ice cream. It might be someone who stutters — they come in for special attention from the president.

How un-self-conscious must a reporter be to actually praise Biden for slipping a few dollars to a child? Given Biden’s reputation for being something of a pedi-perv who showered with his own daughter and likes to sniff young girls’ hair, would you want to put something like this into a puff piece praising the president?

As the MSM tries to find a way to make the president seem appealing they have been searching for a way to frame his presidency as something other than the complete flop that it has been. During the campaign there was Biden the regular guy, Biden the experienced statesman, and Biden the grandfatherly moderate whose positions were shaped in a more innocent, less partisan time. Amtrak Joe–he really, really, really loves children!

None of those Bidens has shown up to be president, so now they are presenting us the unseen, private Biden that only people who have met him can truly appreciate. If only you had met the guy you would understand how terrific he is.

The hard fact, politically, is that one-on-one warmth and empathy only go so far. They helped him forge bipartisan bonds in the Senate but from the White House, most voters, most of the time, only see the president in scripted or staged moments. Biden aides have sought out ways to show voters the president’s private interactions, with behind-the-scenes videos of some of the encounters, even if they are unlikely to ever have a chance at one themselves.

It truly is a struggle, you see, for his hyper competent staff to capture the Biden magic and translate it for the people who unfairly demand that a president actually be competent and coherent in public. If we only saw him behind closed doors, in those private, one-on-one moments (at least those not taking place in a shower) we would come to appreciate how great he truly is. You may not know it but he has been forging bipartisan bonds all his life, explaining his great record finding common ground with Republicans as president. You got a glimpse of that with his Reichstag speech–the healer reaching across the aisle–but it is a wonder to behold in person.

Really. He is great at that one-on-one stuff!

Luckily the Associated Press is here to inform us about this fact: Biden is amazing when you can’t see him! Behold the invisible Biden charm!

There can occasionally be awkward moments, too, such as when a presidential quip lands poorly, that in today’s partisan environment are often broadcast online by his political rivals. But they are outnumbered by the positive interactions that have defined Biden’s career and tested the stamina of his aides.

“He outlasts us,” White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon told The Associated Press of Biden’s penchant for spending 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes longer shaking hands.

“He’s going to take as much time as he wants,” added Stephen Goepfert, Biden’s former personal aide, or “body man.”

That energetic Joe Biden…the 80 year old outlasts his younger aides working the crowds. There is so much hair to smell, and so little time. There are often young children to touch inappropriately too, because ol’ Uncle Joe has a way with the young ones. Stamina, man, is Joe Biden’s actual middle name!

Too bad he likes to shake hands with people who aren’t actually there. But perhaps that is just because he is so enthusiastic about connecting with people. Even ghosts.

Biden, aides said, seems to detect when someone may be going through a personal or family crisis — perhaps informed by his own experiences with grief and challenge: the death of his first wife and daughter in a car crash, the loss of his son to cancer, his recovery from a pair of life-threatening brain aneurysms, a decades-long struggle to overcome a stutter.

“He just instinctually knows how to show up for what that person needs in whatever way that is,” said O’Malley Dillon.

Goepfert followed steps behind Biden at hundreds of events during the campaign and in the White House before he left in August. “I’ve seen him comfort people who were in tears talking about their personal hardships, console somebody who’s recently been diagnosed with cancer, honor a veteran servicemember with a handshake and one of his challenge coins, and also give a young person money for ice cream just for sitting through the speech — and all in the same rope line,” he said.

Enough! I am going to throw up if I read more of this tripe!

This is what the Associated Press calls reporting now. It is pure, unadulterated propaganda. Do you, or does anybody else, take one word of this drivel seriously?

Americans are desperate for leadership that Biden cannot provide. The world is on fire, with Putin openly musing about dropping nuclear weapons, inflation ravaging our savings and reducing our standard of living, and a recession gathering steam. Crime is out of control and the border wide open for human and fentanyl traffickers, and the Associate Press is focusing on Joe Biden’s prowess with selfies?! His actual love of handing children cash? Children?

Don’t they know what that represents to normal folks who have seen Joe Biden with kids?

It is not just absurd, but insulting. Americans are not clamoring for an opportunity to take a selfie with Biden. They want a plan to get the country back on track. Close the border, begin pumping more oil, open more refineries, end the Ukraine war without blowing up the world. Get crime under control.

And the Associated Press is assuring the American people that if we only got to meet the president we would like him?!

First, that’s almost certainly crap. He pretty clearly is a groper who preys on women and children. I have seen the videos. You have too.

Second, even if it were true, it doesn’t really explain why Americans should care. So what if he can work a crowd? He is a president who is driving the country into the ground. Compassion for that person over there is great, but what about the actual damage he is doing to uncounted millions of Americans? We didn’t elect a new age guru; we need a president who can make good decisions.

If the best defense of the president is that he is not a dunce, but a really, truly amiable dunce, you haven’t exactly assuaged anybody’s concern.

I’m really not sure what the AP thought they were accomplishing with this story. It isn’t a realistic profile of the president–and there is no reason to do a human interest story on the president in the midst of the dumpster fire that the 2022 election season has been. It certainly isn’t news. As a puff piece it fails because it is so unrealistic–after decades in politics we all know Joe Biden and either hate him or think him a weak and failing fool.

So why? What was the point of spending the time and energy?

The Establishment is desperate. They have tried the “accomplishments” argument. They have tried the “Republicans scary” argument. They have tried “democracy at risk” ploy. Orange man bad. Putin price hikes. You know the drill.

So they are left with the secret lovable Biden who bribes kids with ice cream and money? You mean the pedophile Biden who sniffs kids’ hair?!

If that is what they’ve got, they have less than nothing.