Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

The two weeks since the first presidential debate certainly feels like the longest stretch in recent American politics, with Joe Biden fighting hourly for his political life while his aides desperately flail to patch up a rapidly decaying media narrative.

🎧 Speaking of which…: I’ll be taping a special emergency episode of Somebody’s Gotta Win after tonight’s Biden presser with my brilliant partner Abby Livingston. Subscribe to the feed here. I’ll also be at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, so reach out if you’ll be in town. I will be dropping in with more frequent podcast episodes and reporting on the ground.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is dangling the prospect of his V.P. pick, driving his closest aides “nuts” as he ponders everything from his candidates’ ambition—the less, the better—to their hair. Elsewhere, the Mar-a-Lago brain trust is loving the chaos in Wilmington, of course. As Trump’s political director James Blair told me, with surprising sangfroid: “We’d rather be us than them, but nothing’s over until it’s over.”

More on all that, below the fold. But first, here’s Abby with the insta-reaction on the presser from the Hill…