The president of the United States, concluding a brief press conference with California governor Gavin Newsom at a Santa Monica fire station, at 11:19 a.m. Pacific Time, Wednesday:

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s astounding what’s happened.

There’s only one piece of good news.  My son lives out here and his wife.  Their — they got a notification yesterday that their home is probably burned to the ground.  Today, it appears that maybe it’s still standing.  We’re not sure.

But the good news is I’m a great-grandfather as of today.  My eldest granddaughter.  (Applause.)  A 10-pound, 4-ounce baby girl — baby boy.

So, I — I’m going to remember this day for a lot of the wrong reasons.  But anyway.

“But anyway”…

I can remember when President George W. Bush, looking out the window of Air Force One, at the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, was supposedly a sign that Bush had no compassion for the victims of the hurricane.

I can remember when President Donald Trump visited San Juan, Puerto Rico and stopped at a church to hand out relief supplies and throwing paper towels into the crowd, and his actions were called “insulting” and “terrible and abominable.”

When Biden offered a “no comment” and weird smile when asked a question about wildfires in Hawaii, outside his beach house in Rehoboth Beach Delaware, he received a fraction of the criticism he deserved. That odd moment, and his sense that the emergency response briefing was the right time to brag about the birth of his great-grandchild, is further evidence that Biden is just mentally not all there.