There has been a definite shift in the media coverage that Joe Biden receives from the mainstream media over the past couple of months and that trend appears to be holding. It’s still verboten for almost any of them (except Fox News) to talk about Biden Inc. and all of the money that flowed to Joe and Hunter Biden during his time as the Vice President. That could damage the entire Democratic Party. But it has slowly become increasingly acceptable for these talking heads and the major newspapers to finally point out the obvious. Joe Biden is too far gone, both in physical stamina and mental acuity to handle the job of the Leader of the Free World. They still generally try to be polite about it, but the tripping, falling, mumbling, and bumbling have become too much to ignore. And now even NBC News has jumped on the bandwagon.

The president of the United States tripping and falling is never a good moment in the throes of a re-election campaign. But when the president is 80 years old and already faces concerns that he’s too old for another term, it’s something of a crisis.

Joe Biden’s aides realized they had a problem last month when the president tripped over a sandbag — hard — at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony. Afterward, a few huddled to figure out what may have gone wrong and how to make sure that such an embarrassing and dangerous incident “never happens again,” according to two people familiar with the discussion.

“You can’t be too careful,” one said.

The linked article from NBC becomes even more blunt as it progresses. They remind us of how Biden regularly used to say “Watch me” when asked if he was still up to the task. They then point out that the President’s major problem is that people have been watching. And what they are seeing is a person who is signaling that “it’s time for him to step aside.”

The article then lists a series of Biden’s “gaffes” which have evolved from being quaintly charming (for some people at least) to seriously alarming. They remind us of how he now confuses Ukraine with Iraq and Rolling Stone Magazine with Rolling Fork, Mississippi. They point to concessions that his staff has made to his infirmity, such as how often he now uses the short staircase underneath Air Force One to board the plane instead of the tall, more impressive side entrance where he has tripped multiple times. (It was 84% of the time in the past seven weeks in case you were wondering. Yes, they’re tracking it that closely.)

NBC even “went there” regarding Biden’s failure to attend the leadership dinner at the NATO summit and seemed to scoff at the lame excuse offered by his aides. He wasn’t “working on the speech” that he wound up flubbing anyway. He was exhausted and it was far past his bedtime. Biden barely puts in four hours on most days when he’s in Washington.

We are even reminded of the note cards and prepared scripts that most reporters previously didn’t want to mention. But the reality is that even those props don’t help reliably anymore. How many times have we heard Biden reciting the ALL CAPS stage directions they give him along with his prepared comments? He’s been caught holding a card telling him which reporter to call on first, what their question will be, and what he’s supposed to say in response. And he still somehow manages to fail in the task.

The problem for most of his critics, however, remains the same. If it’s not Biden, then who? They can’t afford to force him out because then the Democrats would be stuck with cackling Kamala Harris who is incredibly somehow even less popular than Biden. Their only option is to hope that Biden will voluntarily announce that he’s not running but he’s also not resigning. That would open the door to a real primary where they could cross their fingers and hope that either Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama steps up to the plate to challenge the Republicans, most likely Donald Trump. But at least for now, Biden shows no signs of even considering the possibility. Or, more probably, his handlers (including his wife) aren’t considering it.