This was nothing less than the unveiling of the biggest hoax in American political history.

President Joe Biden’s fiery crash and burn on the CNN presidential debate stage Thursday night – after a week of closeted preparation, no less – is no longer about an election. It’s about whether the most powerful nation on Earth is being led – at least outwardly – by the most unfit leader.

Just as importantly, the question no longer is whether Joe Biden is competent to be president of the United States. He isn’t. Everybody knows that now. In fact, the discussion today shouldn’t be whether he’s capable of another four years; the question is whether he should even be at the helm for the next four months.

Rather, the question is, how long have his handlers known all this, and precisely what have they been doing to try to conceal it from the American public?

And, of course, most important of all: who’s really in charge of this White House?

Those who’ve been watching closely have known this all along. What his handlers, his apparent overseers, have done to the country – what they’ve done to Joe Biden – is a crime of historic proportions.

Biden’s handlers have kept him cloistered as much as possible for much of his presidency – as with his 2020 campaign – with limited work hours and engagements on many days, and carefully controlled access to the press.

Reporters were shooed away from a front porch in Michigan earlier this year – even after it was announced he would take questions.

At the 2022 White House Easter Egg Roll, a staffer dressed as a giant Easter Bunny jumped in and, gesturing urgently, interrupted Biden’s talking to the media about Afghanistan and spirited him safely away from whatever the bunny thought he might say.

Handlers and even foreign dignitaries have been leading him off stages, turning him around, picking him off the ground and shutting down access constantly – for the entirety of his tenure, but more and more insistently and hastily.

They’ve been claiming – lying through their teeth, we now know – that Biden is fine. That those videos of a bumbling, stumbling, mumbling president – whom the special counsel called a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” – are “cheap fakes” being used deceptively by Republicans to smear him.

The left-wing media – which is to say “the media” – dutifully ran with that lie. Something called “CBS News Confirmed,” a purported fact-checker, did its best to convince you not to believe your lying eyes. An anchor called the videos of Biden “insidious,” saying that their distribution by The New York Post and the Republican National Committee – another canard; everyone watching was sharing those videos – lent the videos “an air of authenticity.”

“How Republicans used misleading videos to attack Biden in a 24-hour period,” the admittedly failing Washington Post blared in a disingenuous headline. “Such deceptively edited videos, known as ‘cheap fakes,’ have become staples of Republican attacks against the president.”

That’s just a couple of examples of how the state-run media rushed to cover up the president’s debility and decline.

The media have been eager accessories to the biggest hoax in American political history – not all that long after having fallen like a slippery rock for the Democrat-concocted Russia hoax, and accepting creative writing awards for “coverage.”

Biden’s political apologists, who have been no less fervent in their lying, should be roasted by their constituents, and their own tenure in office should be charred by this searing new spotlight.

Just one example: Even after some 45 insiders told The Wall Street Journal of Biden’s obvious cognitive breakdowns in private meetings, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware – from Biden’s home state – insisted “they didn’t use quotes from those of us who serve with President Biden, who know him, who have had the opportunity up-close-and-personal in meetings in the White House or in events publicly or privately, to give affirmation that he is sharp, he is engaged, and he is commanding.”

Maybe The New York Post should publish a front-page rogue’s gallery of all the “Biden is competent” liars, as it did with the 51 intelligence community officials (“Spies Who Lie”) who lied in saying the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation in order to get Biden elected in 2020.

The guiltiest parties by far are Biden’s closest handlers and advisers. They’ve been lying brazenly to the American public about their most important task, and their sacred duty to the American people: their job as caretakers of the most vital position in the world.

They’ve all been blatantly lying about the president’s mental state and his ability to do the job – and they’ve been only-too-happy to slander those of us who’ve seen and shared the truth.

Have the American people ever been told a bigger, more cynical, more dangerous lie?

This is no longer about an election. It’s about whether the lights are on but nobody’s home in the White House. It’s about whether the free world is being led by an out-of-it surrogate.

And it’s about whom he’s a surrogate for.