Well, the so-called “big boy press conference” – the media-created description itself an insult to Joe Biden – has ended.
Biden’s problem? It is more than the press conference that ended. It almost certainly is the end of his re-election candidacy as well.
What did we see last night? We saw Joe Biden, fresh from referring to Ukraine’s President, Vlodomir Zelensky, as “President Putin just hours before…
…come to the podium, and then start by fumbling with a list of names as he told us that these were the people he would be calling on.
In other words, the so-called “big boy press conference” was an entirely scripted event with every questioner pre-selected.
(Is the fact that it originally was scheduled for 5:30PM, then moved to 6:30PM, but actually started around 7:30PM, because Biden needed extra time to rehearse the answers he knew were coming? I doubt we’ll ever know for sure. But would you bet against it?)
With this inauspicious beginning behind him, Biden then – in the first question asked of him, asked by Jeff Mason of Reuters – made reference to his Vice President: Donald Trump.
Do you think I made a mistake just now, and, with laughable inaccuracy, misquoted Joe Biden by, ridiculously, claiming he referenced Donald Trump has his vice president – his female Vice President?
Before you answer, read the verbatim exchange between Mason and Biden:
Mason: “What concerns do you have about Vice President Harris’s ability to beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of the ticket?”
Biden: “Look. I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President tu (if?) I think she’s not qualified to be President”
Vice President Trump? She?
Dear God.
Then there were the dozen or so times during the press conference when Biden’s train of thought went somewhere – who knows where – and, in mid-comment, he said “..anyway,…” and moved to another part of his answer.
Bottom line? Compared to the June 27th debate, this was something of an improvement. Not much, but something.
Standing alone? A disaster. So much so that there were comments by attendees of the just-finished NATO conference that Biden’s Trump Vice President blunder, by itself, overshadowed whatever was accomplished there.
From Joe Barnes’ article for London’s Telegraph:
Joe Biden’s gaffes have ruined months of hard work and undermined the Nato summit, diplomatic sources told The Telegraph.
On stage, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz defended the president over a slip of the tongue in which he called Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin”.
The US leader went on to call Kamala Harris “vice-president Trump”.
But roaming the corridors of the summit, aides were more frank in their verdict of the president’s performance.
“It was awful,” an official said, describing standing in the crowd as events unfurled.
The consensus amongst diplomats and officials who spoke to The Telegraph, and were granted anonymity to speak more freely, was that it took less than a minute to change the narrative of an entire summit.
The sources realised they would be forced to read about the gaffe on tomorrow’s front pages instead of stories of their successes.
“It’s taken the focus away from what has been a great summit for us,” a diplomat said.
Bottom line? This press conference, which was supposed to put Joe Biden back on track in his re-election quest, was a mess.
It did nothing to allay the fears – in some cases, I’m betting, outright panic – of Democrats who are facing the specter of not just a Trump presidency, but a Republican-majority House and Senate as well.
Simply stated, Democrats have to get rid of Biden. Even if he disagrees. And even if his wife, Lady MacBiden – who would rather have her husband ridiculed in public every day than relinquish her first ladyship status – doesn’t like it.
Now: how do they try do it? And how long will it take for them to succeed?
Stay tuned.
