Joe Biden's deterioration should be off stage

Videos of Joe Biden not knowing where he is or saying he just met with a French president who died 25 years ago are not so funny anymore.

They're tragic. And I can't help feeling embarrassed and sorry for the president.

It angers me to see him dodder out in public almost every other day and make a mumbling and confused fool of himself.

Biden's clearly been in the early stages of dementia for several years.

It's getting worse by the week and there's no pill or treatment he can take that will ever make him better.

In the 1990s I watched my father's mental decline for years, but I never had to feel embarrassed for him because it happened entirely in private.

After my father told the country in a letter in 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Nancy brought him home where he was surrounded for the rest of his life by family and friends -- and no media.

She was wise enough to know when to take my father off the world stage. She didn't put him into a rest home where people might see him or take his photo.

She wanted to protect his memory. She wanted him to be remembered the way he was when he was a vital and witty world leader, not the way he was when he was sliding into mental and physical decline.

Biden's wife Jill, the rest of the Biden family and the Democrat Party people who supposedly love and care for him ought to be ashamed of themselves.

They are allowing the whole world -- including the leaders of countries that do not like us -- to watch the daily deterioration of our president.

Joe Biden is already on the road to Alzheimer's. Nearly 7 million Americans already have it. It's a terrible disease that has no cure.

But his wife Jill, his Democrat Party handlers and the major media who ignore or downplay it have only one thing on their mind -- defeating Trump and the MAGA Republicans in the fall.

They all know Vice President Kamala Harris is a joke and even if California Gov. Gavin Newsom replaces her on the 2024 ticket, Joe Biden is the party's only hope to hang on to its power.

But the whole world knows there is no way he will make it through another four years if he's reelected.

He faked his way through the 2020 election by hiding in his basement, but Democrats know he'll never be able to pull off that trick again, even if the help of liberal media again.

So to protect Biden from betraying how much he has declined, Democrats have made sure there are no primaries or debates he has to participate in.

They aren't even going to let him give the traditional three-minute Super Bowl interview this weekend because they're so afraid someone in the media might ask him a question about Hamas.

They just hope they can keep shoving an old man with a broken memory on stage to read words that no longer make much sense to him -- and then whisking him off before he gives an embarrassing answer to any question he's asked.

You'd think Joe's wife would want him to be remembered as he was when he was a senator or the vice president. But it's too late for that.

People are going to remember him as he is now -- an elderly man with a poor memory and confused mind.

My father was honest enough to write us a letter and tell us he had Alzheimer's. He knew when it was time to get off the stage.

Nancy protected my father to the end so people would remember him the way we do now, the way he was -- as a great president and as a human being.

God bless Nancy. Too bad Jill didn't take a lesson from her.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation.