I should not be writing this article.
I should not have to write this article.
A Presidential press conference should not be that noteworthy.
Yet here we are. Here I am, writing about a President Biden’s press conference at the close of the NATO summit in Washington, DC.
Why are we here? Because Joe Biden needed to prove—or at least try to prove—that he is not so far gone in dementia that he is unable to handle the job of President of the United States.
Alas, Biden blew it. He did not prove what he needed to prove. He did not have the night he needed to have.
No one had any illusions about the stakes for this press conference, least of all corporate media ahead of the event.
President Biden is holding a solo press conference today — his first since November — to conclude the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., Thursday evening. It will be one of his biggest public tests since last month's unsteady debate performance, which caused alarm among Democrats on Capitol Hill and raised questions about whether he should be the party's 2024 presidential nominee.
Nor did anyone, least of all me, have any great expectations for Joe Biden ahead of the event.
With the Democrats’ twin fiascos of Joe Biden’s June 27th debate debacle and the Supreme Court’s ruling on Presidential immunity the following week, Biden and his handlers suddenly found themselves in a political envirnment where Biden’s advancing dementia was the sole relevant issue on the political horizon.
Amazingly, even after two full weeks of corporate media running away with the “dementia” narrative, the Democrats are still reluctant to call for Joe Biden to resign or for Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment. Despite an endless stream of bad press from the corporate media, the Democrats were still unwilling to distance themselves too much from the President. Even after a series of dementia-driven gaffes, Democrats on Capitol Hill still were not prepared to take the awkward step of deading
And so here we are.
The press conference got off to a bad start by starting nearly an hour late, for which the NATO summit was officially blamed.
The timing of the news conference President Joe Biden is set to hold Thursday has been changed to no earlier than 7 p.m. ET, and could be held later due to events at the NATO summit.
That may not be entirely true, as livestreams of the press conference showed members of the media milling around waiting on Biden to show up, suggesting that the timetable for the presser was “fluid”.
When Biden did show up nearly an hour late, things did not get any better for the President. He began the presser with the usual set of prepared remarks, and while he managed to sound clear and strong in his delivery, even with those he was having difficulty getting the words out.
Then the questions began—and things only got worse for Biden. In answering the very first question, which touched on concerns over his mental capacity following the debate debacle, Biden managed to flub mentioning Vice President Kamala Harris, referring instead to “Vice President Trump.”
As one might expect, the post-presser media articles lost no time in highlighting that gaffe.
President Joe Biden on Thursday mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” in the opening question of his highly-anticipated solo press conference in Washington.
“Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president [if] I think she’s not qualified to be president,” Biden said, confusing his second-in-command with his November election opponent, former President Donald Trump.
While not on par with the June 27th debate debacle, Biden’s performance was not entirely unlike that evening, with slurred words and flubbed references to key people within his Administration.
The president misspoke and appeared to lose his train of thought several times as he fielded reporters’ questions.
In another blunder, Biden wrongly referred to his chief of staff as “my commander in chief” before catching his mistake.
It was telling that Biden avoided referring to Harris during the press conference except when absolutely necessary. When she was mentioned it was almost in passing, almost as if to damn with faint praise. Despite Harris being “qualified” to be President, Biden repeatedly insisted that he was the best person for the job.
“I wouldn’t have picked her unless I thought she was qualified to be president,” Biden said, citing Harris’ resume from prosecutor to the U.S. Senate.
But in response to a later question he acknowledged he’d moved on from his 2020 campaign promise to be a “bridge” to a new generation of Democrats. “What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited,” he said, without a word about his vice president.
When asked if he would consider stepping aside in favor of Harris, Biden replied that he would only if the polls showed that she could win where he couldn’t.
The press conference ended with Biden being asked directly whether he’d step down for Harris if he saw polling showing she had a better chance of beating Trump. “No, unless they come back and said there’s no way you can win,” Biden responded. Then he added, in a stage whisper, “No poll’s saying that.”
In fairness, Biden is correct on that point. Indeed, the corporate media and the Democrats are have themselves been largely ignoring Kamala Harris, even though she’s the presumptive person to take over BIden’s slot on the ticket—a subtle reminder of how very radioactive Harris actually is within the Democratic Party.
Delivery aside, Biden’s campaign staff had hoped this press conference would highlight Biden’s command of policy details and nuance. In fairness, for most of the debate Biden did appear to be in command of the facts.
Biden’s aides were cheered by his performance. They believe he showed a command of policy that Trump could never hope to match.
Andrew Bates, a White House press spokesman, wrote on social media: “To answer the question on everyone’s mind: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He’s just that f------ good.”
Biden's dilemma is that with so much attention focused on his syntax, he can’t effectively draw distinctions with Trump. He tried his best at the news conference. European leaders, he said, are telling him, "You've got to win. He [Trump] would be a disaster."
However, in the wake of the debate debacle, Biden’s delivery was always going to be uppermost in the minds of viewers, and that was where Biden constantly came up short.
In a moment that would do much to confirm the dementia narrative, near the end of the press conference, when answering a question about what prompted him to run, Biden became momentarily agitated, in an odd and disjointed moment speaking about “guns”.
Ultimately, on a night when Biden need to be supremely great in order to change people’s minds about his fitness to run, he came up short.
Biden's press conference was likely never going to assuage Democrats' concerns. Multiple lawmakers have said they wanted to see the president get out on the campaign trail, hold more news conferences, and grant more in-depth interviews. Biden seemed to acknowledge this during his press conference.
Unfortunately for Biden, this was his first live unscripted event following the debate two weeks ago. His current schedule sets up a reality where each new event becomes a proverbial cliffhanger — will this be a debate repeat? — rather than a chance to focus on his opponent and his weaknesses.
That he did come up short may very well be what dooms his campaign before even formally being nominated by the Democrats.
One aspect of his performance during the press conference that likely did not serve him well was his constant reverting to stump speech comparisons to Donald Trump, a bit of crass politicking that is generally considered bad form at world summits.
His own speech was unusual for a world summit. It focussed on the differences in his foreign and domestic policies from those put forward by Trump.
At one point he started talking about US inflation figures ─ putting himself in full campaign mode ─ in an attempt to get on the offensive after his own mistake. He said Trump was a threat to the Nato alliance.
The behavior was noticed by more than just the veteran media watchers, as comments here on Substack illustrate.
While last night’s press conference was not the same epic disaster that the debate with Donald Trump had been, it was problematic enough that it could ultimately prove fatal to Biden’s re-election chances.
It is almost certain that tonight’s events will see more Democrats come forward to declare they cannot support his campaign any longer.
If Mr Biden looked shaky at the start of this week, tonight he looked finished.
Yet until the Democrats take a more forceful tone with respect to his stepping aside, Biden remains very much in control of his political future. He still is the one who will make the decision whether or not to step aside, either in favor of Kamala Harris or some other individual.
So far, the Democrats have not taken that more forceful tone, and may be unable to do so. Pulling Biden back from the brink of an historic re-election fiasco may simply be beyond the capacities of the Democratic Party as this point.
One problem the Democrats face is that, while Biden’s chances at winning this fall’s election are seen as having plummeted, Harris’ has not seen hers improve all that much, even though she is now enjoying better betting odds than Joe Biden.
Despite two weeks of what can only be described as a re-election nightmare, Biden still enjoys greater favoribility among the electorate than Harris, even though his unfavorables are significantly higher than hers.
Indeed, Harris does not fare any better against Donald Trump in the current polling.
Unfortunately for both Joe Biden and the Democrats, last night’s press conference did not change any of the recent dynamics of this year’s Presidential election. Everything that was true before the press conference remained true afterwards.
Joe Biden walked up to the podium needing to assuage Democrat concerns about his mental fitness to be run for re-election. He left the podium with those concerns still very much in place.
The Democrats needed Joe Biden to show he could still function as President. They still need him to make that showing.
The Democrats still do not have a clear solution to their political crisis. For all the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing over Biden’s advancing dementia, no Democrat has stepped forward to make a case that they should be the nominee instead—including Vice President Harris.
Which means Joe Biden ended last night largely at the same place where he began: down in the polls, seen as losing badly to Donald Trump, and still a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination next month.
The press conference was supposed to be Joe Biden’s chance to show he still had what it takes.
Instead, last night Biden blew it. Bigly.
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The idiots covering for him are in trouble, and they know that they are. Their political futures are in doubt, and they don't know how to do anything else. The few at the top can look for 'media' jobs, the rest can look for anything, Biden Administration will net look good on a resume.