IF YOU GIVE A TRUMPBOT A WEDGIE:

Joe Biden has become America's leading troll -- and he's trolling Donald Trump. The president's supposedly grand speech in "defense of democracy" under attack by "Trump and the MAGA Republicans" was hardly a visionary call to renew our commitment to the Republic.

If it had been the highfalutin speech we were promised, Biden wouldn't have spent ludicrous time praising himself for things like prescription-drug costs and burn-pit health coverage. No, this speech was nakedly, even comically, designed not to elevate but to offend -- to poke and taunt and push his predecessor and his predecessor's camp followers and acolytes into firing back about how evil Biden is.

Biden wants Trump angry, and loud, and silencing every other voice but his own. It's not an accident that Biden's rise and the Democratic enthusiasm surge has come in tandem with Trump once again at the top of the American news agenda over the past six weeks. Biden knows he won in 2020 by successfully making the election a referendum on Trump. Nothing would make him happier than having the 2022 election continue in that vein.

For that to happen, he needs Trump and his Trumpies to be seduced into yelling and screaming and tweeting and arguing that the 2020 election needs to be re-run and that people who stormed the Capitol need to be apologized to and whatever other damn-fool argle-bargle comes out of their mouths and fingers.

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