President Joe Biden is a teetotaler, and with good reason.
“There are enough alcoholics in my family,” he answered once when asked why he didn’t imbibe adult beverages.
According to The New York Times, the president believes there’s a genetic component to addiction; his progeny, unfortunately, is an object lesson in our blind-squirrel president occasionally finding a nut of truth.
Thus, nobody could blame Biden’s oft-incoherent performance Thursday on the casks of beer it was delivered in front of during a visit to the state of Wisconsin. Instead, it was just Joe Biden being Joe Biden in 2024 — and it was bad enough that the people who put together the White House transcripts of the president’s remarks could hardly make sense out of the gaffe.
Biden was at the Earth Rider Brewery in Superior to tout the effects of his infrastructure spending sprees — because, apparently, we desperately needed federal money to ensure that a brewery in a state that drinks the seventh-most alcohol per capita in the nation stayed open during a pandemic that kept people home and saw booze consumption soar concomitantly. (No offense, Wisconsin, but I think this is one area where we could have let the free market do its work.)
But, no: As the White House transcript indicates, the president was there to tell a story about “the progress we’re making to invest in America — in American workers, in American products — to invest in America. That’s what we’re doing: bringing work, opportunity, and hope to people and communities all across this country.”
About halfway through the laundry list of boondoggles that the Biden administration was bringing to Wisconsin, he mentioned that over a billion dollars was being spent in the state to “provide clean water and replace poisonous lead pipes. Every lead pipe is going to be taken out so you can turn on your faucet and drink clean water without getting sick.”
“And that’s on top of another billion dollars to clean up the Great Lakes, which provide drinking water to 20 million people — 20 million people,” Biden said, before segueing on to this — which may have been in Klingon, for all I know:
JUST IN: President Biden sounds like he is speaking a different language while giving a speech at the Earth Rider Brewery in Superior, Wisconsin.
Don’t worry… The media has assured us that he is sharper than ever!
“The beer brewed here. It is used to make the brewed beer.… pic.twitter.com/UeJ3zf2ZXX
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 25, 2024
Inspiring! What he said!
It used to be said that the most difficult job in the world was being the president of the United States of America. I’ve since revised that estimation: The most difficult job in the world is being the stenographer to the president of the United States of America.
See, the White House provides publicly available transcripts for all of Biden’s speeches. This is a somewhat problematic process since, well, a transcript is a recording of what someone says — and with Joe, that’s quite often unclear to the point of incomprehensibility.
This is the job the transcriber ended up doing, which feels a bit like what often gets called “quiet quitting”:
“And, by the way, it used to make the beer brewed here — (laughs) — it is used to make the brewed beer here in this refine- — oh, Earth Rider, thanks for the Great Lakes. I wondered why (inaudible) — (laughter).”
In fact, the transcriber could have saved himself or herself a bit of trouble by just putting up a page that said “(inaudible) — (laughter)” and leaving it at that. Because — as you might not be surprised to discover — this wasn’t the only moment of dubious clarity during the president’s remarks:
BIDEN (mumbling): “Bipartishan infrashrushure law” pic.twitter.com/ybHwT13IBH
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 25, 2024
BIDEN: “We get thou— look, we you know, we now have, before the recession, before the pandemic…” pic.twitter.com/3sLnKdFegV
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 25, 2024
Biden brags about creating “169 new jobs in Wisconsin” during his presidency pic.twitter.com/9QeA0T8I10
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 25, 2024
At least in the last instance, the transcriber had the kindness to add that he had added “169 [thousand]” new jobs in Wisconsin, not just 169. (In truth, the real number might be closer to the latter figure when you take into account that the White House counts jobs that came back after COVID lockdowns ended as jobs it “added,” which is a bit like an employer saying he “added” $4,000 to an employee’s salary after last month’s paycheck bounced and he was forced to reissue it.)
For the incurable masochists among our readership, here are the president’s full remarks in Superior on Thursday:
However, the incident is the latest episode in the great battle between the president and the men and women who have to prepare his remarks in a cogent manner for public consumption.
In March, for instance, Biden said during a White House event that he’d worked “to help keep hands out of the hands of domestic political advisers.” Whoops! Here’s the transcript edit:
Biden said yesterday that he worked to “keep guns out of the hands of domestic political advisers” and the White House was forced to make a hilarious edit to their transcript haha. pic.twitter.com/ZtshEnBjtp
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 23, 2023
In July, meanwhile, he said during a news briefing that “we ended cancer as we know it.” Not only that but — for once — he said it quite clearly:
Believeth not your lying ears, America, because the official White House transcript indicated Biden said “We can end cancer as we know it.” No “[sic]” or strikethrough text to indicate his original comments, which were absurdly false, were actually uttered.
And how do you think the folks at the White House handled this gem from 2022?
Is everything okay?
We carried Presdient Biden’s Ukraine remarks live on @FaulknerFocus today. #kleptocracy pic.twitter.com/aINZImChEy
— HARRISFAULKNER (@HARRISFAULKNER) April 29, 2022
Transcript: “In addition to this supplemental funding, I’m also sending to Congress a comprehensive package of — that will enhance our underlying effort to accommodate [hold accountable] the Russian oligarchs and make sure we take their — take their ill-begotten gains.”
“Ha, we’re going to ‘accommodate’ them,” the transcript continued. “We’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes, and other ill-begotten gains of Putin’s kleptoc- — yeah — kleptocracy and klep- — the guys who are the kleptocracies. (Laughs.)”
(Inaudible.) (Laughter.)
Unfortunately, this deterioration isn’t so funny when you realize this is an 81-year-old man not just wrapping up his political legacy but campaigning for four more years in his current office. If it’s not the beer talking, then it’s the cognitive decline. America should listen to it, and closely. Rest assured our enemies will.
