“It’s a State of the Union miracle!” quipped Senator Ted Cruz regarding a story about how the White House dropped its mask mandate Tuesday. Likewise, the attending physician in Congress lifted the chamber’s mask mandate effective Monday, and the CDC on Friday changed its guidelines, effectively releasing 70% of the country — including Washington, DC — from the supposed necessity of masks. On Monday, the Democrat-controlled Leftcoast states of California, Oregon, and Washington all announced the end of mask mandates, even in schools. New York did so Sunday.

It should be blatantly obvious that this was all politically timed to coincide with Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last night. Indeed, the Democrats’ big COVID pivot is happening just as we predicted in January.

As for Biden, who might have been vaguely aware of what he was bumbling through on that teleprompter last night, he announced the CDC’s news as if it was a pleasant surprise instead of politically calculated theater.

“Just a few days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the CDC — issued new mask guidelines,” Biden marveled. “Under these new guidelines, most Americans in most of the country can now be mask free.” His point was to show what an amazing job he’s done: “Thanks to the progress we have made this past year, COVID-19 need no longer control our lives.”

COVID deaths are not the direct responsibility of a president, but what did Biden previously say about this subject? During a 2020 presidential debate, Biden noted that 220,000 Americans had died of COVID, concluding, “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”

When Biden took office, nearly 400,000 people had died of (or with) COVID. That number is now over 951,000, and that’s post-vaccine.

Progress?

Back to masks, sure enough, the vast majority of people attending the State of the Union were maskless. Then again, there were an awful lot of empty seats, and most people had an open seat between them and the next person. Where was everyone?

Social distancing requirements limited attendance, but, according to KCBS reporter Doug Sovern, so did “boycotting Republicans who did not want to submit the required negative COVID-19 test to attend.”

Maybe Republicans didn’t want to use one of those ChiCom Virus test kits Biden ordered from China – oh the irony.

Biden seemed blissfully unaware of the empty seats. “Last year,” he bragged in his opening, “COVID-19 kept us apart. This year we are finally together again.” Later in the speech, he asserted: “It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again. People working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office. We’re doing that here in the federal government.”

Uh, no they’re not. Again, the room was half empty.

The sharp pivot from Democrats would be shocking if anyone expected them to be anything but shameless. “He’s such a moron,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy last summer when he criticized the House mask mandate. That would be the same Nancy Pelosi violating mask guidelines at that salon and smiling sans mask all through last night’s speech.

Pelosi is hardly alone in having blasted Republicans who concluded long ago that masks were unnecessary. Democrats may claim their newfound facial freedom is driven by science and data — the latter is better in recent weeks — but as we’ve highlighted before, prior to the pandemic virtually no medical experts recommended masks to prevent respiratory viral spread. The science didn’t change; the politics did.

Speaking of experts and missing people, has anyone seen Dr. Anthony Fauci? Our office joke was predicting that he’d receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom last night, but he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the last we seem to have heard from Fauci was two weeks ago, when he said that maybe perhaps it could be sort of time to start thinking about “inching” back toward normal.

On a final note, President Unity chastised his political opponents over the pandemic. “We can’t change how divided we’ve been,” he said, “but we can change how we move forward.” Who did the dividing? Oh, that’s right — Joe Biden did by blaming Donald Trump for every COVID death and then by issuing unconstitutional vaccine mandates that resulted in many Americans losing their jobs. No wonder he didn’t utter the word “mandate” anywhere in his speech. All he’s got to say for himself now is that he did such a great job that the past can be the past. Forget a mask. He should stuff a sock in it.