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 he 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 tossed 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, Del., he received a fraction of the criticism he deserved. That odd moment, and his sense yesterday 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.