Joe Biden would like to tell you a story of victory. His victories, he and his media lackeys have spent the last month or so telling us, include a roaring economy, lower gas prices, passing infrastructure spending and gun control and the Inflation Reduction Act, offering student loan “forgiveness,” taking out our terrorist enemies, and more heroic efforts. To that list of fables we can add his Sunday boast about the coronavirus: “The pandemic is over.”

“We still have a problem with COVID,” the president said during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday. “We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape, and so I think it’s changing.” Oh, people are still wearing masks out there, Joe. Some people are in the at-risk categories for whom that’s understandable. Others are, well, Biden voters.

For those of you who quit upending your life over COVID two years ago, Biden’s comment may seem oddly late to the game. To Democrats and the Leftmedia, however, his pre-midterm election proclamation about beating the pandemic is not something they’re quite ready to admit.

That’ll change over the next six weeks as the Left revamps COVID messaging so as to win the election.

Taxpayer-funded NPR worries that “there are still thousands of cases being detected every day, and many estimates could be off, as many cases are going unreported.”

The Washington Post harrumphed that Biden’s “off-the-cuff remarks” come “even as hundreds of Americans continue to die of covid each day,” and the paper frets that Biden’s comments “may complicate [the] White House struggle to secure additional funding for coronavirus vaccines, tests and treatments.” How, after all, can the administration extend the public health emergency next month if the pandemic is over? The Post adds that Biden’s statement “came as a surprise to administration officials.”

The 79-year-old president is indeed cognitively impaired and routinely makes bungled statements (more below, in fact) that contradict his own White House policy. But we’re not sure we buy it in this case. Again, this is calculated to make voters feel like he and his party brought them through an awful pandemic.

For example, here he is boasting about vaccination: “When I got in office, when I got elected, only two million people had been vaccinated. I got 220 million — my point is it takes time. We were left in a very difficult situation. It’s been a very difficult time. Very difficult.” According to Biden, Donald Trump left the nation in a bind. According to a stubborn thing called reality, Trump aided greatly in getting vaccines ready in record time, all while Democrats sowed doubt and distrust about them. The only reason Biden can claim so many more vaccinated people on his watch is that it wasn’t available for public consumption until after he was elected. His scummy efforts to claim credit for the vaccines date back to the spring of 2021.

The vaccines have, of course, proven to be less than advertised. So much so that the CDC even recently discovered natural immunity — unfortunately only after countless unvaccinated people lost their jobs thanks to Democrat vax mandates, including hundreds more in New York City just this past week.

Where do they go for recompense now that “the pandemic is over”?

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps has quietly dropped efforts to discharge unvaccinated Marines making religious objections to the jab. Falling woefully short of recruitment goals will cause some reevaluation.

Biden wasn’t done saying dumb stuff in his “60 Minutes” interview.

“We’re growing the economy, and it’s growing in a way that it hasn’t in years and years,” he said, including a promise that “we’re gonna get control of inflation.” In fact, he declared, “I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time.” Well, it is almost October before an election.

The truth? The U.S. is technically in recession after two consecutive quarters of negative GDP.

His comments regarding foreign policy certainly muddied the waters.

Scott Pelley: “Would U.S. forces defend [Taiwan against China]?”

Joe Biden: “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”

Pelley: “So, unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces, U.S. men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?”

Biden: “Yes.”

That is not U.S. stated policy, the White House immediately clarified after the interview, though it’s not the first time Biden has asserted it. Trump expertly kept his opponents on the ropes with strategic ambiguity. Somehow we don’t think that’s what Biden is doing.

Finally, inquiring minds including Pelley want to know if Biden will run for reelection in 2024. “My intention, as I said to begin with, is that I would run again,” Biden answered. “But it’s just an intention. But is it a firm decision that I run again? That remains to be seen.”

He’s a definite maybe, he says. The rest of the nation knows there’s no way on God’s green earth that this man has the capacity to run again. The biggest problem for Democrats is that Kamala Harris is not an obvious successor, but it sure isn’t going to look good shoving a black woman to the side so a white guy like Gavin Newsom can take her place. Identity politics is a cruel mistress.

But hey, the pandemic is over. Right? Right?