When President Joe Biden was allowed to plead his re-election case on Sunday night, he presented the best case for why he should never have been elected in the first place.

Because, according to reports, his ambition for a second term is to make the country as good as it was when Donald Trump was president.

That was the hidden message from Biden’s “60 Minutes” interview, which aired Sunday night – and it came through loud and clear.

According to the transcript, Biden was given a pass on any question about how his appeasement policies toward Iran may have encouraged the Hamas terror attack on Israel, which has opened up a new war in the Middle East.

(According to Biden, there is “no clear evidence” that Iran played a part.)

He got to take free shots at Republicans, who supposedly don’t believe in democracy, while not a single thing was said about his own party’s extreme left, where even criticizing the decapitation of babies is difficult.

He was allowed to blather on about the Ukrainian war without questioning his role in encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to believe he could get away with the invasion or addressing the toll that US backing for Ukraine is taking on his own country’s military readiness. (According to CNN, the armaments supplied by the US to Ukraine put American forces in a dangerous position when it comes to replenishment.)

Then he was hit with the granddaddy of softball inquiries, and he struck out poorly.

"Are you sure that you want to run again?"

Biden says yes because he thinks he'll achieve world peace. He does not mention the American people. pic.twitter.com/huxKVjXaPK

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 15, 2023

“Mr. President, given these two wars and the dysfunction in Congress, are you sure that you want to run again?” Pelley asked, according to the transcript.

The answer wasn’t exactly reassuring for Biden’s fans.

“Yes, because I’m sure …” There was a suspicious change in the camera angle there, giving the very strong impression that CBS producers were covering for the fact that the president needed time to gather his thoughts.

“Look, when I ran, I said, ‘The world’s at an inflection point,’” Biden said.

“The world’s changing, but we have an opportunity to make it — so, imagine if we were able to succeed in getting the Middle East put in place where we have normalization of relations. I think we can do that. Imagine what happens if we, in fact, unite all of Europe and Putin is finally put down where he cannot cause the kind of trouble he’s been causing. We have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make it a better world.”

That world sounds a lot like the one Trump had created before Biden took over the White House in 2021. Biden might as well have vowed to restore order and security to the southern border, increase American energy production, revitalize the economy, and have a stunning former model as his first lady.

Everything Biden says he wants to accomplish by running again — stabilizing the Middle East, uniting Europe, deterring Putin — was already done when he came into office, thanks to President Trump.

Biden’s policies and weakness ruined it all. pic.twitter.com/Qi4G13JMAP

— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) October 16, 2023

This is actually hilarious – you're right, he's bringing up things that were already solved before he came along. Haha. This is fabulous ad fodder.

— Moss Man (@TheMossMan) October 16, 2023

Remember Democrats create an issue then try to fix that issue all while patting themselves on the back

— losphorwords (@losphorwords) October 16, 2023

The Abraham Accords, signed under Trump’s watch, were the first signs of “normalization” of Middle Eastern relations since the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

By the end of Trump’s presidency, four Arab countries — the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco — had established diplomatic ties with Israel.

An Israeli-Saudi reunion was likely, and the Palestinian question’s lengthy dominance of Middle East politics appeared to be fading.

With Biden’s election, his administration’s drive to erase everything Trump has led the United States to appease Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and, according to The Wall Street Journal, the power behind the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

(Biden’s remark about “no clear evidence” was a craven deception. Admitting Iran’s role in the atrocity would necessitate his taking action.)

Russia did not attack Ukraine when Donald Trump was president. And it’s difficult to picture Trump essentially authorizing the invasion in the same manner that Biden did.

In other words, it is not “Europe,” whether united or not, that holds dictators like Vladimir Putin in check. It’s a strong American presidency — the kind that keeps the globe in order without having to do so.

It is an axiom of conservative ideology that the United States is neither responsible for the actions of other countries, nor is it responsible for ensuring global peace. That can only be done by God.

But it’s also a fact that the world’s only superpower dictates the behavior of other countries in the same way that a planet dictates the behavior of the moons that orbit it. Another fact is that nature despises vacuum cleaners.

A world in which the United States is governed by a doddering, almost definitely corrupt octagenarian whose moral compass has failed miserably (if he ever had one) is a world in which the worst players on the international stage fill a power vacuum. It’s a step back on all fronts.

In contrast, the world that Donald Trump was constructing featured a Middle East that was exhibiting clear signs of progress. It was a peaceful world in Europe. And, astonishingly, more than 1,000 Jews were not slaughtered in a single day in the biggest anti-Semitic tragedy since the Holocaust.

If China was becoming more bellicose, it knew there was an American president in control eager to face it. (Most Americans have already forgotten how easily a Chinese surveillance balloon breached American airspace and flew above the country’s heartland for a week. It’s a safe assumption that the hard guys in Beijing haven’t forgotten.)

On Sunday night, Biden did not make a case for his re-election. He argued that he should never have been elected in the first place.

Americans must keep this in mind in 2024.