CHRIS CRUCIAL: The *utter* normality of Joe Biden 😐

PLUS: Steve Bannon, meet jail.

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1. Biden’s super-normal D-Day speech

I watched President Joe Biden’s speech at Normandy — to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion — not once but twice. (It’s only 16 minutes long.)

It wasn’t a perfect speech. Biden made several verbal flubs. He still mumbles at times. Soaring oratory is not really his thing. (Barack Obama he is not -- but almost no one is.)

Nor was it evidence — as Trump-aligned forces suggested — that Biden is losing it or that he simply is not up to the job. (Or that he somehow soiled himself on stage. People are the worst.)

What I was struck by in watching — and re-watching — the speech is how incredibly, well, normal it was.

This was an American president — on the world stage — making the case for the greatness of the country.

“Just walk the rows of this cemetery as I have…nearly 10,000 heroes buried side by side,” Biden said at one point. “Officers and enlisted. Immigrants and native born. Different races. Different faiths But all Americans. All served with honor when America and the world needed them most.”

This was an American president making the case for our system of government — and why it takes all of us to make it work.

“They understood our democracy is only as strong as all of us make it — together,” Biden said.

And this was an American president making the case for the necessity of our European alliances. Biden called D-Day “a powerful illustration of how alliances, real alliances, make us stronger,” adding: “[It’s] a lesson that I pray we Americans never forget.”

It was a speech — and you can read the transcript of the address here — that George W. Bush could have given. Or Bill Clinton. Or George H.W. Bush. Or, I think, Richard Nixon. Or John Kennedy.

It was not a speech that Donald Trump could — or would — ever have given.