Jay Leno, longtime host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” complained in November 2008 that then-President-elect Barack Obama did not give comedians much material for jokes.
But Leno assured his audience that the incoming Obama administration still had comedic potential.
“See this is why God gave us Joe Biden,” Leno quipped according to Reuters.
Indeed, imagine if the current crop of late-night hosts had not sold out to become shills for the establishment. Oh, the opportunities they have missed.
After all, when it comes to unintentional comedy, the gift of Biden has never stopped giving.
With this in mind, and in the spirit of year-end reviews, here are President Joe Biden’s top ten gaffes and blunders from 2023, presented as a countdown to the most hilarious gaffe-filled appearance of all:
10. “Frishi-Heh-Fring-Fruzh”
Biden’s Feb. 7 State of the Union address featured a line so badly mangled that perplexed observers could only guess at what the president actually said.
Do you believe Joe Biden is fit to be president?
On the social media platform X, then known as Twitter, the conservative news outlet The First took a stab at deciphering Biden’s slurred words.
“If you try anything to raise the cost of frishi-heh-fring-fruzh, I will veto it!” The First tweeted.
WATCH – Ol’ Joe Makes a Major Announcement:
“If you try anything to raise the cost of
frishi-heh-fring-fruzh, I will veto it!” pic.twitter.com/m06zO0kTj0— The First (@TheFirstonTV) February 8, 2023
The White House transcript of the prepared speech showed that the president meant to promise affordable prescription drugs.
“Make no mistake, if you try to do anything to raise the cost of prescription drugs, I will veto it,” the transcript read.
When delivered from a teleprompter and given that special Biden touch, however, it sounded quite different.
9. Pushing Out the Eggs
Vice President Kamala Harris may have set the standard for cackling, but it turns out that Biden fancies himself quite the hen.
Recall that by early spring the president had not yet announced plans to seek a second term.
Thus, at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 10, weather presenter Al Roker of NBC’s “Today” asked Biden if he planned on running for re-election in 2024.
“Well, I’ll either, I’ll eith — I’ll either be rolling the egg or, uh, being the, the guy — you know, the guy who’s pushing them out,” the president said.
Cue the Aflac duck from the old Yogi Berra commercials:
What did the president mean? Who knows?
Alas, this time we had no prepared speech to help translate.
8. “God save the queen, man.”
On June 16, Biden concluded a speech on gun control in one of the most bizarre ways imaginable.
“God save the queen, man,” the president said before laying down the microphone.
Biden then pointed to his left with both index fingers, gave a puzzled look and used both thumbs to point back in the other direction. It was clear that he sought help finding his way off stage.
But the president’s confusion about which way to turn paled in comparison to his confusion about the British monarchy. After all, Queen Elizabeth II — the only queen in recent memory — died on Sept. 8, 2022.
Had the queen lived, however, the remark still would have made no sense in this context or any other we could envision. British queens have little to say about even British government policies, let alone gun control in the United States.
Furthermore, Americans have not honored a monarch in that way since 1776. Perhaps the president missed that historical tidbit while plagiarizing others’ work during his first year of law school.
7. Jim Crow Joe Strikes Again … and Again
During a Feb. 15 speech to union members in Maryland, Biden let slip an obvious epithet from the days of racial segregation.
The president noted that Wes Moore, Maryland’s black Democratic governor and a former college football player, looked as if he had maintained his bicep muscles since his playing days.
“He’s the real deal, and the boy looked like he could still play,” Biden said. “He got some guns on him.”
“Boy,” of course, has long functioned as a term of racial condescension when directed toward black men. And the president used it more than once in 2023.
At the Congressional Black Caucus’ 52nd Annual Legislative Conference on Sept. 23, Biden — still obsessed with biceps — again channeled his inner George Wallace.
“By the way that boy — that man’s got biceps bigger than my thighs,” the president said.
6. “Jonah where are you?”
Before she entered Congress, Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut won a “Teacher of the Year” award in 2016.
On April 24, Biden hosted a small gathering at the White House to honor 2023 teaching award recipients. Hayes, whose first name is pronounced Juh-han-uh, attended the ceremony.
The president — perhaps fresh from reading the Old Testament — made one whale of a gaffe. And he did it over and over.
“Thank you for the members of Congress here today,” Biden said, “including two outstanding educating congresswomen, Jonah … and, by the way, Jonah Hayes is, Jonah where are you? There you are Jonah. Right in front of me. Stand up, Jonah. Jonah happens to be a teacher, happens to be the 2016 national teacher of the year.”
5. Medal of Dishonor
At the White House on Sept. 5, Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to Vietnam veteran Larry Taylor.
After pinning the medal on the retired Army captain, the president inexplicably walked away and left the room.
Meanwhile, the bewildered Taylor stood alone at the dais as the ceremony continued.
But Biden had vanished before the concluding prayer and even before the audience stopped clapping.
“It was nap-nap time,” one person joked on the social media platform X.
It was nap-nap time
— Whiskey Hell (@Whiskey_Hell) September 5, 2023
That seems as good an explanation as any.
4. Two Men Kissing
In an interview with actor and former Obama White House staffer Kal Penn that aired March 13 on “The Daily Show,” Biden conjured perhaps his most brazen lie of 2023.
When asked about the “evolution” of his “support for same-sex marriage,” the president replied with the tallest of tall tales.
“I can remember exactly when my epiphany was,” Biden said.
“I was a senior in high school, and my dad was dropping me off. I remember about to get out of the car, and I look to my right, and two well-dressed men in suits kissed each other. I mean, they gave each other a kiss.”
“And I’ll never forget it, I turned and looked at my dad, and he said, ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other. It’s simple,’ — now I’m not joking,” he continued.
The octogenarian Biden graduated high school in 1961. Thus, he almost certainly did not see two men in suits kissing one another.
Even if he did, however, his willingness to read modern woke values into the early 1960s and to involve his own father in a conversation so obviously fabricated says a great about the kind of liar the president really is.
3. The Sandbag
On June 1, Biden attended the U.S. Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony.
After shaking one graduate’s hand in front of a podium, and as the audience began to applaud, the president turned to his left, tripped over a sandbag and fell to the stage floor.
Under normal circumstances, of course, an 80-year-old man falling to the ground would be no laughing matter.
Biden, however, has a well documented history of struggling to stay upright. And his tyrannical administration makes him a fit object for mockery.
Furthermore — as this list shows — his physical frailty merely complements his obvious cognitive decline.
2. The Kitchen Fire
On Aug. 8, a deadly wildfire ravaged the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian Island of Maui.
When Biden finally got around to visiting the island nearly two weeks later, he tried to relate to the fire’s victims, but his attempt came across as so lame and insulting that it almost defies belief.
Recall that the wildfire resulted in 100 confirmed fatalities as of Nov. 14, according to KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home. Years ago now, fifteen years ago, I was in Washington doing ‘Meet the Press.’ It was a sunny Sunday, and lightning struck at home, on a little lake that’s outside of our home — not a lake, a big pond — and hit the wire, and came up underneath our home, into the heating ducts, the air conditioning duct,” the president said to the people of Lahaina.
Biden described a small kitchen fire at his Delaware home. No one died, and the fire was out in 20 minutes.
“To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette and my cat,” the president added.
Biden’s narcissistic remarks in Maui came only a week after he responded to a reporter’s question about the wildfire with the most callous answer in recent memory: “No comment.”
1. “Good evening, Vietnam”
The people of Southeast Asia received the full Biden treatment in all its inglorious absurdity.
On Sept. 10, the president gave a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. There, he showcased everything about him that makes Americans cringe: his lack of self-awareness, his adversarial relationship with the English language and his obvious unfitness for rigorous duties.
“Well, you know, there is that — one of my staff members said, ‘Remember the famous song, you know, ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’?’ Well, good evening, Vietnam. And good morning back in America,” Biden said.
“Good Morning, Vietnam,” a 1987 film starring the late Robin Williams, criticized U.S. involvement in — and lack of transparency about — the Vietnam War.
Having casually joked about a tragic era in Vietnam’s history, Biden then treated the gathered press to a painfully lengthy recounting of one of his favorite scenes from an old John Wayne movie.
“And there’s a — my — my brother loves having — there’s famous lines from movies that he always quotes. You know, it’s — and one — one of them is — there’s — there’s a movie about John Wayne. He’s an Indian scout. And they’re trying to get the Ap- — I think it was the Apache — one — one of the great tribes of America back on the reservation,” Biden said.
“And he’s standing with a Union so — so he’s — they’re all on their — and they’re on their horses in their saddles. And there’s three or four Indians in headdresses, and the Union soldiers — and the Union soldiers are basically saying to the Indians, ‘Come with me, we’ll take care of you. We’ll — everything will be good,’” he continued.
“And the Indian scou- — the Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, ‘He’s a lying, dog-faced pony soldier.’”
The president went through all of that — in Vietnam, surrounded by members of the foreign press — simply to arrive at his “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” line, which he used on a campaign stop in 2020.
Finally, just before White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre cut the president’s microphone and ended the press conference, Biden let reporters know that he had run out of energy.
“But I tell you what, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed,” the president said.
In short, the scene encapsulated Biden’s gaffe-filled 2023, as well as his regrettable presidency.
