Why does President Joe Biden even bother having summits, when he keeps dodging critical issues?

First came his virtual sitdown Monday with China’s Xi Jinping, when the prez apparently didn’t even bring up Beijing’s refusal to cooperate with any independent probe of how COVID got started. How is a plague that increasingly looks like it was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has killed more than 5 million around the globe, and over 750,000 Americans, not a vital issue?

The two talked on a myriad of topics — trade, human rights, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Taiwan — but ignored the elephant in the room.

Then came Thursday’s sitdown with Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López (as well as the pretty boy from Canada) in a North American Leaders’ Summit that was supposed to cover migration as well as trade issues — but didn’t cover the raging migrant crisis at the US-Mexico border.

This, when apprehensions are at a 35-year high, with 1.7 million arrests in fiscal year 2021 alone — and Mexico’s cooperation is essential to any effective border-control policy.  

“There’s not a real focus, this time around, on our borders,” a Biden official told reporters in advance of the sitdown. Why not — is Vice President Kamala Harris supposed to work it out at some North American No. 2s confab?

Maybe the problem is that AMLO has been saying that it’s all Biden’s fault, for taking a famously welcoming approach to those who enter illegally. Or maybe the White House staff is just afraid of what the prez might say to other leaders if they talk about the most important issues on Americans’ minds.

Heck, the staff even canceled the joint press conference originally planned after Thursday’s meeting.

If the prez isn’t going to raise vital issues at these meetings, you have to think the real point is simply to make him look like a leader without actually doing the work.