It was a rare moment of unity that President Joe Biden delivered on Tuesday — but it wasn’t the kind any politician wants.
During a speech at the Kempsville Recreation Center in Virginia Beach, Virginia, aimed at touting the benefits of the federal government’s increasing involvement in American health care, Biden bungled one line so badly everyone knew it.
The president knew he screwed up. The audience knew he screwed up. The White House transcript writers didn’t even bother trying to cover it up — they just tried to put the best spin on it possible. It didn’t work.
Biden’s battles with the English language in public speaking are so common it’s almost more newsworthy when the president doesn’t embarrass himself during an engagement, but Tuesday’s was different.
Normally, he just babbles around his misstatements, bluffing his way through the trouble areas until he finds surer footing a sentence or two down.
This time, Biden stopped cold. Check it out here:
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The official White House transcript quotes the president as if he were doing a comedy routine:
“Bringing down prescription drug cost doesn’t just save money for seniors and Medicare; it’s going to have a significant effect on the federal deficit. It’s going to lower the debt by $159 billion. (Applause.)
“And you say, ‘Well, how can that be, Joe?’ Well, right now, the government — our tax dollars pay out through Medicare the help for the prescription drugs. If they have to pay out 150 thou- — 159 thou- — billion dollars let- — (the President rolls his eyes) — (laughter) — less for prescription drugs, then it reduces the deficit.”
Well, working as part of Biden’s communications team has to have its own problems of internal dynamics. Aside from trying to make the senescent president look good on a regular basis, even when he’s making scary faces on a public stage, the White House staffers have to maintain a vestige of self-respect somehow.
So pretending he’s spewing lines like Stephen Colbert is probably the best they could do.
But viewers whose paychecks don’t depend on pretending Emperor Biden is wearing the finest clothes had a somewhat different view.
As one Twitter user put it: “Even Joe is fed up with Joe at this stage.”
Today’s edition of Joe Biden vs. the teleprompter. pic.twitter.com/vWoIc5aufs
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 28, 2023
He is just a mess
— Nancy (@Nancy29501346) February 28, 2023
Did they just reboot him live on stage?? https://t.co/FeN6pnkUCr
— Stelvis (@Stelvis11) February 28, 2023
When you have trouble reading something that’s right in front of you and can’t it’s time to go joe
— ricki allen (@ricki111162) March 1, 2023
Even Joe is fed up with Joe at this point
— Nodnarbogstel (@Nodnarbogstel3) February 28, 2023
It could well be true that Biden is fed up with Biden at this point. Even as the living embodiment of the Peter Principle, the president has to have some dim notion that he’s not the FDR reprise his Democrats and the propagandists of the establishment media tried to build him up as.
He’s just a tired, very probably corrupt, old man teetering on the verge of dotage, barely able to keep his stories straight between the lies he’s telling for political purposes and the lies he’s telling about his personal life.
His aides must hold their breath every time he takes the stage, trying to imagine what humiliation he’s going to inflict on the nation this time and how they’re going to explain it away yet again.
On Tuesday, though, not even Biden could pretend there was nothing wrong.
And even if the White House transcript tried to play it as though Biden were deadpanning a moment for laughs, anyone viewing the video has to see it for what it is.
It’s a moment of proof the nation is being led by a man who’s not up to the job.
He wasn’t up for it during the Democratic primary campaign that he won by the grace of James Clyburn and Democratic fears that Bernie Sanders socialism was a sure loser to American voters.
He wasn’t up for it during the general election fight with then-President Donald Trump, which he won thanks to the rewriting of elections laws during the pandemic, massive interference by social media companies and totalitarian tactics by the FBI and other American intelligence agencies.
And he isn’t today.
Not even the best White House spin is going to change that.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
