DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE AND THE BANANA REPUBLIC: Biden calls for Trump to be jailed 14 days before 2024 election: ‘We gotta lock him up!’

Retiring President Biden stunned listeners Tuesday by calling for his predecessor Donald Trump to be jailed — 14 days before the presidential election in which Trump is the Republican nominee.

“If I said this 5 years ago, you’d lock me up: we gotta lock him up,” Biden, 81, said during a visit to a Democratic campaign office in New Hampshire.

After a four-second pause during which his audience enthusiastically applauded, Biden added: “politically lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

The president and his aides typically refrain from commenting on the four pending criminal cases against Trump, who contends that a quartet of local and federal indictments last year were politically motivated to aid Biden’s then-re-election campaign.

Biden has tauntingly referenced Trump’s legal woes before, including saying last week, “I think he’s running to stay out of jail.”

All the best people told me during Trump’s first term that wanting to lock your political opponents up is the stuff of fascism:

By trying to have Mrs. Clinton prosecuted, Mr. Trump was following through on a campaign promise. At rallies, he often stood on stage denouncing her as crowds chanted, “Lock her up!”

“This reeks of a typical practice in authoritarian regimes where whoever attains power, they don’t just take over power peacefully, but they punish and jail their opponents,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University.

I eagerly await equally strong condemnations of Biden’s rhetoric as well. (But I won’t be holding my breath in the meantime.)

Simultaneously, I’m eagerly awaiting discussions about the 25th Amendment: