Tehran has weighed in, claiming to have contacted Israel to not do too much else in Gaza, or else Iran will have to get involved. That is, of course, as if they haven’t gotten involved already. Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, warned Iran is threatening to get off the sideline soon when he appeared with Margaret Brennan on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday.

Here’s the question. If Iran purportedly has not gotten involved as of yet, what is the premise by which the Biden administration cut a deal with Qatar to withhold the transfer of the $6 billion dollars? I’m all for withholding money from Tehran wherever and however long as possible in order to starve that regime quite literally to death. They were within 30 days of being out of cash entirely, and had two back-to-back years of negative GDP growth while Donald Trump was president. They’re awash in cash now, with accounts receivable loaded up with promises of more to follow.

Quite simply, the possibilities of the war widening into more than a regional conflict, and the ramifications of Iran getting involved, make this still the most important story in the country to cover. There are three people who have the highest chance of being elected president in just over a year. This is not to slight any candidate running, but a simple look at polling, fundraising, and momentum would indicate that as of today, there’s only three people who have a statistical shot at the top job – Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis. My curiosity in watching the news over the weekend was to see how all three addressed the biggest and most important story in the country right now.

Joe Biden – The addled President addressed a Jewish roundtable Friday where he claimed he told the Iranians to be careful. He was not being too clear which Iranians to which he was referring, or to be careful about what exactly, or whether it to be careful about wading into the conflict now for the first time, or wading further into it, which is more factually true. Whatever warning he was issuing, there was no public statement about the ‘or else’ one might want to see after a warning is given to the largest state sponsor of terror in the world.

Biden followed that up with a policy change of sorts – reneging on a $6 billion commitment to transfer money by way of an account set up in Qatar, to Iran. The untenable position of the White House is to say they have no evidence Iran was involved in the attacks of October 7, that they have no choice in the matter but to transfer the money, that transferring the money is totally safe because it’s watched very closely to make sure it’s only used for humanitarian purposes, and we’re actually going to hold up on it now, because the politics of us giving money to Iran now is bad optics or something. As far as American foreign policy goes, it’s Jell-O in its consistency.

Then, Biden addressed the Human Rights Campaign. He made one substantive statement regarding the attacks by Hamas on Israel.

The statement was fine for what it was, but failed to address the nature of Iran’s involvement. On 60 Minutes Sunday night with Scott Pelley, Biden was more direct than he’s been up to date on the need to Israel to go in and do what needs to be done.

On Iran’s culpability and involvement, Biden still claims there’s no evidence.

If there’s no evidence, there’s no justification for all of a sudden holding back the $6 billion, other than for his own political expediency back home. As for his previous cryptic warning to Iran for the future, it was no less cryptic here.

Again, sort of a red line…ish. Except what happens if they do, do, do, do? Well, we don’t have a good answer to that, do we? Scott Pelley, for some inexplicable reason, didn’t seem to have that question, question, question, question in his head, head, head, head. Does Joe know what we would do? Hard to tell when it took Dr. Jill Biden to come on stage in order to tell him how to exit the stage. Yes, that actually happened. But that was only after the President took time away from the world crisis to address the more immediate concern of gay rights and how he’s always been for them since he was a kid.

No, he did not witness that. Even Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post fact-checked that and had three major problems with the story.

He’s on record as saying he had the dubious exchange with his father walking to school and saw two males kissing openly in the parking lot. Another version of the story was seeing two men kissing in another car at a light. In another telling of the story, Biden is the father having the conversation with his own kid. The story wasn’t even begun to be told by Biden until the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015.

But the big lie in this cut isn’t whether the story is true. It’s the premise behind the story that Joe Biden has always been for same sex marriage. He hasn’t. He is on record in 1973 in his first term of office in the Senate viewing, in his words, homosexuals as national security risks. Biden was one of 84 other senators to vote yes to the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which federally defined marriage as between one man and one woman. On Meet the Press with Tim Russert in 2006, this was lifelong supporter of gay marriage Joe Biden.

As Kessler reports in his fact-check, Biden went so far as to co-sponsor a Jesse Helms-written amendment in 1994 to ban federal funds to school districts that taught acceptance of homosexuality as a lifestyle.

So on the big issue, Biden said he supports Israel, though his policy decisions and actions all the way up to this conflict helped usher in the attacks. Biden is opaque on Iran’s role, past, present or future. And whatever seriousness the President wishes to project is undermined, by Biden himself, by pandering to a special interest group by lying about his own record on the issue and making stories up out of whole cloth in order to whitewash his true record.

Donald Trump – Last week to a group of supporters at Mar-A-Lago, the former President addressed the subject by saying Israel needs to be supported…but also blasted Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for not being tough enough and for not being supportive enough of Donald Trump. He has since walked that back online to be more full-throated in his defense of Israel. But whatever the issue is these days, Trump’s response seems to be how the issue revolves around Trump’s world.

I believe that to be true. I also believe that to be irrelevant to what he would do now and how he would respond to the current attacks, what assistance he would give, and what he would do about the hidden hand of Iran in all of this.

Again, he’s right. The Middle East was far more stable on his watch than it is now. It still doesn’t answer the question of what he would do with the reality on the ground today. There was no comment by the former President on Iranian involvement, whether he believes Iran was involved in supplying and training Hamas to carry out these attacks, or how he would deter Iran from further action.

As for the non-big story items discussed by President Trump to gauge how serious he is on the important issues, here’s a couple of other campaign videos released at the same time over the weekend as the two on Israel.

Okay, Forbes has fallen. Good to know. That is crucial to the presidential election of 2024 and how the country moves forward… how?

Spending almost 90 seconds blasting other Republicans in rapid-fire, ad hominem attacks, showcased in an overall meta-theme of Republicans having to unite and quit bashing other Republicans, is among the Trumpiest cuts I’ve ever seen. To Trump, he is the party. All unity must be to him. Any disunity or attacking of him is met with withering counterfire, because to Trump, to criticize Trump is to forfeit your Republican Party credentials. Anti-Trump parody accounts using AI couldn’t have created a better video themselves. It just belittles any sense of seriousness Trump is trying to project on the big stuff.

Ron DeSantis – After a series of campaign events in New Hampshire and Iowa, campaign videos with resolved support for Israel and condemnation of Hamas, the Florida Governor also signed an executive order in Florida on Friday ratcheting up sanctions on Iran by the state of Florida, stating the obvious, that Iran’s involvement in this is self-evident, and if you’re really going to support Israel, you have to cut the head off the snake in Tehran.

DeSantis also appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan Sunday, and did not waver a bit on what should happen with Gazan refugees trying to flee.

He also was unequivocal in who should get the blame if there are innocent Gazan casualties as a result of retaliatory strikes by Israel.

As to whether DeSantis is staying focused on the important stuff or undercutting his own seriousness by getting sidetracked on other things on the stump, here is DeSantis at a small meet and greet in Iowa.

Again, the odds are quite high that one of these three people will be president. Things can change, campaigns can ebb and flow between now and when the primary season ends. But ask yourself an honest question. Who’s the most serious candidate of the three on things that matter?