One day after he announced he was running for a second term, our cognitively challenged commander in chief was spotted clutching a cheat sheet with the exact wording of a question he was about to be asked at a press conference.

It’s bad enough that the Los Angeles Times agreed to submit questions in advance and collude in this Emperor’s New Clothes-style defrauding of the American voter, but Joe Biden can’t even get it together enough to hide the cheat sheets.

Honestly, if Republicans can’t figure out how to beat this corrupt, divisive, addled, old man, who has wrought so much damage in half a term, then what use are they?

Biden’s prerecorded announcement Tuesday that he wants to “finish the job” at 82 should be God’s gift to his political opponents, especially when his cackling backup is a vice president whose every public utterance seems to be written by Cheech & Chong.

Instead, we have Donald Trump aping Biden and threatening not to debate his fellow GOP candidates in the scheduled primary jousts starting August in Milwaukee.

This is how Republican voters get to assess the merits of various candidates and decide who has the best chance to win a general election.

It’s a crucial part of the vetting process, and it would be a betrayal of voters to bypass it. 

“When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers . . . why subject yourself to being libeled and abused?” Trump announced on Truth Social.

You can only hope that he’s teasing. Otherwise, the obvious conclusion is that he is running scared from Ron DeSantis. 

He’s not attacking Nikki Haley or Mike Pence. Only Ron “DeSanctimonious.”

The attack ads from Trump PACs are on high rotation as the daily barrage of insults pile up, and meaningless national polls are brandished as if the contest is over before it begins.

But DeSantis does not seem like the sort of wimp who will throw in the towel before he even gets in the ring. If anything, the attacks will harden his resolve. 

He has to challenge the king now, and if he wins, he will be unstoppable. 

Republican voters deserve a choice, at least.

If Trump emerges triumphant, having vanquished the best the GOP had to give, then he will be stronger and lead a more united party. But he won’t do it by wimping out of debates.

Last week, Trump racked up a slew of endorsements from the Florida GOP congressional delegation, in an orchestrated hit on ­DeSantis when he visited Washington, DC. 

The goal was to highlight what is said to be his fatal flaw: He doesn’t care about people, is aloof, “arrogant,” “boring” and “robotic.” People whisper that he is “on the spectrum.” 

“He seems to struggle with relationships . . . I look people in the eye when I shake their hands,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said.

Florida Rep. Greg Steube whined to Politico that when he injured himself falling off a ladder, he never heard from DeSantis, while Trump called him in the ICU.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna griped that when her father died, she didn’t hear from DeSantis, while Trump sent her a note. The condolence letter from DeSantis’ wife Casey seemed to count for nothing.

Former Rep. David Trott slammed DeSantis as “an a- -hole . . . I don’t think he cares about people.” He complained that he had sat next to DeSantis for two years when they were in Congress and he “didn’t introduce himself or even say hello.” Who knew these members of Congress were such delicate flowers.

But actions speak louder than words, and DeSantis has a record of competent governance that just won him a second term with a record 1.5 million vote margin. Winning is everything.

And maybe he is not an “a–hole,” who doesn’t care about people. Maybe he’s just an introvert. 

That personality trait covers about half of all Americans, serious folk who prefer small groups of people and enjoy their own company. They give themselves time to develop an inner life and think through problems. 

In the nation’s moments of greatest peril, introverts have come to the rescue. 

Abraham Lincoln was “quiet and enjoyed solitude” but was a great leader because he was able to “demonstrate the importance of resilience, forbearance, emotional intelligence, thoughtful listening and the consideration of all sides of an argument [and] the value of staying true to a larger mission,” reported Inc. magazine.

John Quincy Adams was an introvert, as were Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon.

It doesn’t mean introverts always make great leaders, as Barack Obama showed, but he still proved highly effective for his side of politics. 

Our era calls for prudence, temperance, and fortitude. The problems that have blown up under Democratic rule are too big to be dealt with any other way.

In any case, being good at shmoozing is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Biden is lauded as the greatest retail politician of his time and look where that’s got us.

Anthony Fauci now breezily admits masks only worked 10% of the time and school lockdowns hurt kids, but still refuses to acknowledge he made mistakes. Instead, he blames everyone else.

“There was a personification of me as a person who essentially closed everything down [but] those were public health recommendations that came from the CDC,” he told CNN Wednesday. 

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield begged to differ: “It’s disappointing that people just don’t take responsibility and accountability for the consequences of their recommendations . . . Tony was clearly an aggressive spokesman for closures, school closures, shutdowns and mandates, and I would argue that all three of those policies were not effective . . . were not optimal for our response . . . We [should not] rewrite history and say the things we did were the right decision when in fact they were suboptimal.”

Failing to admit mistakes is about more than ego. It endangers us for next time. 

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and fellow sane medicos who have formed the Norfolk Group say a lot of mistakes were made and are calling for an honest, depoliticized evaluation of what went wrong. 

“It’s difficult when you have leaders like Fauci misleading America on a [scientific] consensus when there wasn’t one,” Bhattacharya said last week. But we “need to deescalate and [conduct] an honest evaluation.”

To that end they have created a list of questions for a future commission of inquiry to analyze America’s response to the pandemic. It’s not about laying blame, but about learning lessons. 

Despite the Dems’ best efforts to bury the story, more than three quarters — 78% — of American voters have been “closely following” news reports about First Son Hunter Biden’s scandals, according to a new Rasmussen poll. 

And more than two-thirds of voters believe it is a “serious scandal” that Hunter allegedly received “preferential treatment” during an IRS tax investigation. 

Among Republicans, 82% say it’s serious, and 71% of independents agree. 

Even 53% of Democrats say it’s serious. 

As the scandal tiptoes closer to the White House, it’s not going to be as easy to censor as it was in 2020.