‘APRIL is the cruelest month,” poet T. S. Eliot famously declared.
Joe Biden might beg to differ.
June is shaping up as a potential nightmare for the 81-year-old president.
His re-election, his legacy and son Hunter Biden’s freedom are all on the line over the course of a month-long gantlet.
And he has only himself to blame.
Biden’s surprising demand last week that Donald Trump debate him twice, with the first face-off in June, underscores his desperation to get his campaign back on track.
His insistence on a televised showdown in a month already crammed with high-stakes events reveals that Biden knows his bid for a second term is in deep trouble.
Trailing in most if not all of the swing states and getting disastrous ratings from voters, he’s ready to put his chips on the table five months before the election.
Trump agreed to both debates, with the first scheduled for June 27 and the second for Sept. 10.
It’s rare that a president’s schedule drives headlines, but there is nothing ordinary about Biden’s lineup for June.
It looks like a formula for disaster.
Consider that Hunter Biden is scheduled to face felony gun and tax charges in two separate trials next month.
The chance that his son could end up in prison, aides say, is never far from the president’s mind.
“Psychological torment” is how a Politico report described what Biden is experiencing.
It quoted aides as saying that although the president speaks to Hunter daily, the White House staff tip-toes around the topic out of “fear of an angry rebuke or an icy stare.”