A rumor circulated Sunday. By Monday, it had wafted all over Twitter and other social media — which had it that Joe Biden’s meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican was interrupted thanks to an unexpected event.

Namely, that the occupant of the White House had a bowel malfunction in mid-conversation with the pontiff, and was shortly whisked away to a less public locale — one which afforded Biden more privacy than, say, Kyrsten Sinema is given nowadays — that he might recover his dignity.

Zero chance this didn’t happen. https://t.co/hGe6fo22fP

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 31, 2021

Within hours, thanks to the immensely influential Catturd Twitter page, #PoopGate and #PoopyPantsBiden shot to the top of the hashtag rankings in the same manner that “Let’s Go, Brandon” songs began dominating the iTunes download charts.

Snopes swears up and down that there is no basis to the story. Perhaps that’s correct, though a nation already weary of the stench from Biden’s fiscal, economic, and foreign-policy incontinence cannot help but wonder if this rumor is connected at all to the infamous “My butt’s been wiped!” outburst on the White House lawn not long ago.

Biden did little to inspire confidence in Snopes’ fact-checking. That he was absent when the other G20 participants in Rome gathered for a coin toss into the Trevi Fountain was another point of suspicion as to his level of function. As was the fact he showed up 20 minutes late to his own press conference, then warbled something about “playing with the elevators” as an excuse. Then he did that thing again, stating that he was told his first question should come from a reporter whose name was written on a note card.

It then surfaced that Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, who has been vaccinated, is now COVID-positive and has been quarantining since Wednesday of last week. Psaki met with Biden on Tuesday of last week, and just a few days later, Biden met maskless with the pope.

By Monday, Biden was caught on video drifting off to sleep in Scotland amid a droning lecture from some climate change activist or bureaucrat at the unfortunately named and entirely unnecessary COP26 event. He might be more effective at spreading COVID overseas than American influence; it remains to be seen.

The Scotland event in itself is a rather pungent failure. The hundreds of private jets descending on Glasgow carrying loads of billionaires and potentates whose personal carbon footprints outstrip their fellow earthlings by factors in the dozens or scores — to be charitable — give the lie to the idea that any of them are serious about fighting the will-o-the-wisp that is global warming. Biden’s motorcade in Rome, before he was flown to his nap in Glasgow, numbered some 85 armored limousines and SUVs.

Meanwhile, China and Russia decided not to bother with Scotland at all.

This came after a completely incoherent speech given on behalf of the flagging Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, and an even more incoherent presser in Rome. The effect of this string of mephitic performances is not a particularly good one; the world is now laughing at the addled American president and declaring our days of world leadership at an end.

Biden added to that, too. He panned the G20 meeting in Rome for its failure to result in any concrete agreements to “address climate change,” and caused a diplomatic incident in the process with a profoundly useless statement.

“The disappointment relates to the fact that Russia, and … not only Russia but China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate changes,” Biden said.

This came on the heels of a repeated demand by the president that Russia and Saudi Arabia should increase oil production to soothe price shocks at the American pump, a demand which resulted, essentially, in his interlocutors telling him to get bent.

A Reuters reporter tagged Biden with an inconvenient question about that demand upon his arrival in Scotland. “Do you see any irony in pushing [OPEC+] to increase oil production at the same time that you’re going to COP26 to urge people to lower emissions?” asked the reporter. Biden’s response was vomit-inducing: “On the surface, it seems like an irony,” he said, and then, “the truth of the matter is … that the idea we’re going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight and not have — from this moment on, not use oil or not use gas or not use hydrogen is just not rational.”

Sure, Joe. Which is why it was a brain-dead, incontinent policy to hamstring the domestic energy industry. OPEC and the other oil producers saw that happen and recognized the magical opportunity to profit on a wide scale by keeping production sluggish and prices through the roof. You didn’t see that coming?

Or more to the point, your handlers — and not the ones who follow you into the lavatory — didn’t?

The weekend’s fetid performance wasn’t a surprise. Laying stinkers is what this administration and its political allies do nowadays.

Consider that before Biden and his entourage departed across the Atlantic, word leaked of a deal the administration was cooking up with the ACLU that would pay as much as $450,000 per person to illegal aliens who had been separated from their families during the Trump administration after being caught trying to trespass across the border. That set off a grand chorus of “what in the ‘Let’s Go Brandon'” from Americans of all shapes, sizes and colors.

By the weekend, “Let’s Go, Brandon” had apparently become the national motto, so much so that a Southwest Airlines pilot was rumored to have signed off a cockpit announcement on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque with the cheer. An Associated Press reporter claimed to be on that flight and said she was “almost removed from the plane” for trying to accost the pilot with questions afterward. Meanwhile, stadiums and concert halls across the country continued erupting in “Let’s Go, Brandon!” cheers as Americans busily downloaded rap tunes and bought up t-shirts to fuel the fad.

The polls reflected that, while left-wing news media types just discovering the LGB community may have their collective knickers in a twist over its coming-out, November might turn into an anti-Biden pride month. An NBC poll found his approval rating at a measly 42 percent — five points higher than a CIVIQS poll and two points higher than IBD/TIPP has him. Rasmussen has Biden’s approval at 42, but disapproval at an eye-popping 57 percent.

There is little prospect of any of this getting better. We’re on the verge of seeing mass public policy-induced unemployment thanks to Biden’s vaccine mandates, despite a trickle (perhaps soon to be a flood) of court decisions invalidating them. Then there is Biden’s laughable “Build Back Better” agenda, for which he advertised an agreement on a “framework” by which it might pass through Congress before departing for Europe. Less than 24 hours after his premature triumph, it was clear that agenda was in no better condition than before, and time and political capital are running short — as is the public’s patience with Biden’s plan. Just 25 percent see a personal benefit to the multi-trillion-dollar spending spree; 32 percent expect it’ll make things worse.

And today, Biden faces the prospect of having botched the first year of his presidency so badly that reliably blue Virginia could flip to the GOP in gubernatorial and other statewide elections. If it doesn’t, the specter of the same kinds of electoral irregularities a wide swath of the American people suspect put Biden into office has now descended on Virginia; a Terry McAuliffe gubernatorial win which takes days to produce and drops out of suspicious mail-in balloting will only further foul the political air across the country.

The odor — it’s dishonesty and failure, though it does smell a lot like that other item — coming off Biden is undeniable. It isn’t going away. How much more of it we can take is a question only time can answer.