Welcome back in for Al’s Afternoon Tea, our chance to serve up the latest headlines.

We’re just a few hours away from Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Just delivering the speech will be something else. Last time he stood on a stage before a crowd, someone tried to blow his head off.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden is self-isolating in Delaware after being diagnosed with COVID-19 yesterday. I don’t want to say Democrats are eager to get rid of Biden, but they did spend the night urging the family to send him to a New York nursing home.

As we said just a couple of days ago, every once in a while CNN commentator Van Jones hits on the truth (and as some of us here at The Stream are wont to say, “Even a blind nut finds a squirrel every once in a while.” Think about it.). Wednesday night Jones said, “A bullet couldn’t stop Trump. A virus just stopped Biden.”

Van Jones rips into Biden: “A bullet couldn’t stop Trump. A virus just stopped Biden.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/moapWKQSdT

— AF Post (@AFpost) July 18, 2024

This may be literally true. Axios is reporting Democratic leaders now believe Biden may step aside as soon as this weekend. More on that below. 

GOP Convention: An Excited J.D. Vance Makes His Debut as VP Nominee

As I watched Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance deliver his acceptance speech last night at the GOP Convention, I was (oddly enough) reminded of acharity concert from the late 1980s. At the time, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams was one of the hottest acts in the world, with a string of massive hits under his belt, routinely selling out arenas. He was a big star. For this show, he was paired with Sir Paul McCartney for a rollicking rendition of the Beatles classic “I Saw Her Standing There.” The whole time he was singing and playing, Adams had wide eyes and a huge grin, like a teenager. His thoughts were all over his face. I’m on stage singing a Beatles tune with Paul Friggin’ McCartney!!!!!!!!!!”  How in the world is some kid from Canada on a stage with a Beatle?

So it seemed last night with J.D. Vance. What he said I can barely remember. But that grin, that giddiness. How is it a kid from a wretched, dysfunctional background in Middletown, Ohio is on a stage as the running mate of Donald Friggin’ Trump?

It was kind of cute. 

Vance also made a vow: “I will give you everything I have to serve you.”

The vice presidential nominee told funny stories about the colorful grandmother who raised him — a character so grand it took the great actress Glenn Close to play her in a movie. He proudly introduced his mother and celebrated her nearly 10 years of sobriety. And he spoke of the hardships those in the Rust Belt face and how Joe Biden, from his days as a senator to today, has help create those hardships and bring them to his hometown.

You could say his words “Cut Like a Knife.”

A Granddaughter and Unbowed Target of DOJ Persecution

Two other speakers lit up the arena Wednesday night.

Donald Trump’s eldest granddaughter, Kai Trump, made her public debut. The 17-year-old is a stunner, a brunette echo of her grandmother Ivana, with more than a litte dose of Trump sass. She insisted that Trump is “just a normal grandfather,” albeit one who tries to “get in my head” when they’re golfing. It doesn’t work. “He forgets I’m a Trump too.”

Kai also talked about the attempt on her grandfather’s life and how “a lot of people have put my grandpa through hell, and he’s still standing.”

Kai Trump gives a heartwarming speech at the RNC about her grandfather President Donald Trump ❤️🇺🇸

"To me, he's just a normal grandpa. He gives us candy and soda when our parents aren't looking. He always wants to know how we are doing in school. When I made the honor roll, he… pic.twitter.com/zA6UlriqaA

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 18, 2024

One of the many Trump associates who also has been put through hell spoke as well: Former White House advisor Peter Navarro, who came straight to the RNC after being released from prison yesterday morning.

Navarro had been dragged off a plane in shackles by Biden’s Department of Justice, persecuted for daring to claim executive privilege when rejecting a subpoena to appear before the bogus J6 Committee. In fact, he was sentenced to prison for doing exactly what Attorney General Merrick Garland is doing right this moment: ignoring a congressional subpoena. Said a feisty, unbowed Navarro to the crowd: “I went to prison so you don’t have to.”

And, he warned, “If they can come for me, and if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.”

Peter Navarro: “If they can come for me, and if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.”

pic.twitter.com/rf4M2elj8f

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 17, 2024

Shock: Secret Service ID’s Crooks as a “Threat” 10 Minutes Before Trump Took Stage … But Took No Action

The more we learn about the Secret Service’s failures last Saturday, the harder it becomes to chalk it all up as incompetence. Just the News details at least six major security errors. Here’s one of the biggies: In a conference call with senators, the FBI and Secret Service revealed that the Secret Service identified Thomas Crooks as a “threat” 10 full minutes before Trump took the stage.

And yet, they still let Trump go out to deliver his speech. (!!!) This is unconscionable. Why did they allow that? Because Crooks looked like a gamer who hadn’t left his mother’s basement since before COVID?

In fact, the Secret Service had Crooks pegged as suspicious for a full hour before the shooting began. And yet … and yet …

Republican senators were not happy with the briefing. Several confronted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle right on the floor of the convention center in Milwaukee where the RNC is meeting — and then chased her through the halls when she refused to respond. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) posted a video of the confrontation.

🚨FULL VIDEO: Secret Service Director REFUSES to answer to the American people. pic.twitter.com/MPVOke5zhY

— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) July 18, 2024

Crooks Posted on Gaming Site “July 13 Will Be My Premiere.”

Would-be assassin Thomas Crooks hinted something was coming. According to CNN, Crooks posted on the popular gaming platform Steam that “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds.”

Three anonymous officials tell CNN Crooks’s phone contained photos of Trump and Biden, along with a schedule of Trump events and the dates of the DNC Convention (a leak that appears designed to indicate Crooks wasn’t partisan). This would be consistent with Crooks’s classmate telling Fox News digital Crooks had it in for all politicians, not just Republican ones.  

Leave It to the Babylon Bee

Goliath Claims He Only Lost Because He Fought David On Slightly Sloped Surface https://t.co/S9DccwJ1l1 pic.twitter.com/LIj4DbZT2g

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 17, 2024

When Is Joe Biden Dropping Out?

It seems to be all over but for the shouting for Joe Biden. He tells the press he would consider dropping out of the presidential race if he had a “medical condition,” and hours later he’s diagnosed with COVID-19. He’s now got both Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi saying he can’t win and it’s time to go. Kamala Harris’s advisors are reportedly pushing Biden’s advisors to tell him to “pass the torch.” The unspoken “or else”? Invoking the 25^th Amendment.

He’s even lost MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who this morning said those around Biden must convince him to “do the right thing.” (Why start now?) “This is not going to end well,” he added.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny claimed that for the first time, Biden is becoming “more receptive” to the idea of dropping out, and is “not as defiant” as he was before the assassination attempt on Trump. Biden has gone from asking advisors about his chances to asking if “they think Kamala can win.”

Win? Right now, let’s stick to the basics. Can she make it up a set of stairs? Can she remember the names of the Cabinet secretaries and not refer to the Secretary of Defense as “the black man” as Biden did in his interview with BET this week? 

Biden Calls His Defense Secretary 'The Black Man' After He Appears To Forget His Name pic.twitter.com/6RFBxBtged

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 18, 2024

Seriously, at this point, the ability to function is all we’re asking for. Not a lot to ask.

The writing is on the wall in letters so large even Biden can read them. According to Axios, Democratic leaders now believe the “rising pressure from party congressional leaders and close friends will convince President Biden to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.” 

“His choice is to be one of history’s heroes, or to be sure of the fact that there’ll never be a Biden Presidential Library,” a close friend told Axios. “I pray that he does the right thing. He’s heading that way.”

The COVID diagnosis offers Biden a graceful off-ramp, even if — as we pray – his case is mild. Besides, it would only be natural for another bout with COVID to take out any fight he has left in him. The question is when to announce that decision? Would he drop out tonight to steal Trump’s thunder? Wait until the DNC convention? Axios’s sources think (or is it hope?) he’ll do it as soon as this weekend.

But The Big Guy is nothing if not stubborn. He may well drag it out. However, do not be surprised if we do get an announcement in a few days designed to disrupt the GOP momentum and allow Democrats to retool in time for their own convention.  

Last night, NBC’s Chuck Todd gave Biden about 10 days to accept the inevitable. “We’re bordering on Sixth Sense Bruce Willis territory, where every Democrat kind of knows that this candidacy is over, except the candidate.”

One can almost imagine the young Haley Joel Osment here: “I see dead campaigns.”

On the Stream Menu

Stream contributor Albin Sadar offers “Conspiracy Theory Turns Deadly.” 

Dr. Michael Brown’s latest is just up: “The Ominous Rise of ‘Christian’ Antisemitism.”

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.