President Joe Biden picked a convenient time to try to reassure America that he was still worth keeping in place as the Democratic nominee for president.
After last week’s stumbling debate performance and an increasing chorus of calls from within his own party to abandon his 2024 run, he gave a series of interviews on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That’s the day before Independence Day, Independence Day and the day after Independence Day, on a long summer weekend.
In other words, Biden was set up so as few people as possible would watch or listen to the interviews that were meant to resecure his position atop the Democratic ticket. That’s an inspiring vote of confidence from Team White House.
And even then, people were still paying attention and Biden still stumbled during the series of interviews with black radio hosts and ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
But don’t take my word for it, even though Biden’s words — if taken as he spoke them — declared himself to be a black woman who “put NATO together” and couldn’t remember whether he watched his poor debate performance the week before.
Take The New York Times’ headline/subheadline combo from Thursday: “Biden Stumbles Over His Words as He Tries to Steady Re-Election Campaign; The president’s appearances have come under intense scrutiny since he appeared feeble in his debate against former President Donald J. Trump.”
Yikes.
This from the paper that, until the debate, was willing to play along with the idea of “cheap fakes,” videos of the president being, well, himself that were “misleading” (the Times’ words, not mine) voters into thinking he lacked energy and vigor.
And, indeed, the Times’ headline this time underplayed the issue significantly about his appearance Friday on Wisconsin’s syndicated “The Earl Ingram Show,” in which the paper acknowledged “the president at times spoke haltingly as he delivered his rapid-fire answers.”
Does the Biden coverup go all the way back to the campaign he ran from his basement in 2020?
Ingram, whose show “is aimed at Black listeners in Wisconsin but is also broadcast around the country,” the Times noted, asked Biden to “speak to some accomplishments that we may or may not be familiar with about your record.”
The president responded by talking about the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity for former President Donald Trump in issues relating to his official acts in office.
“You need someone, someone who is going to make sure that — the Supreme Court just issued a decision, by the way, that threatens the American principle that we have no kings in America,” Biden said. “There’s no one above the law.
“That’s where we always — we gave Donald Trump executive — a power to, to use a system — and it’s just never contemplated by our founders because of the people he appointed to the court.”
(The Times brought out an old standby, noting that Biden, in his answers, was “appearing to stutter several times, a condition he has struggled with since he was a child.”)
“It’s just presidential immunity. He can say that I did this in my capacity as an executive, it may have been wrong, but I did it,” Biden continued. “But that’s going to hold — because I — and this is the same guy who says that he wants to enact revenge.”
Those are his “accomplishments.”
This wasn’t a word salad but a soup sandwich — and it’s what happens when Biden is forced to campaign from someplace that isn’t his basement, as he did for most of the 2020 race. It’s easier to cover these things up when you’re conducting your run for high office from your own house.
“The president’s responses to Mr. Ingram’s four questions were lengthy as he largely stuck to listing his accomplishments in office and criticizing Mr. Trump,” the Times said. “But in the 17-minute interview, he sometimes stopped himself in the middle of an answer.”
And keep in mind, this wasn’t Biden speaking off the cuff. The host confirmed to The Associated Press that the president’s campaign provided a list of questions to ask him.
“They gave me the exact questions to ask,” Ingram said. “There was no back and forth.”
Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of WURD-AM in Philadelphia, also confirmed she was given a list of questions to ask the president:
Holy smokes.
The Biden camp has been pointing to the local radio interviews he did after the debate as evidence that he’s fine, but the radio hosts who conducted those interviews told CNN this morning the questions were scripted and provided by the White House. pic.twitter.com/ttExWKE7Vz
— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 6, 2024
WURD announced Sunday it was cutting ties with Lawful-Sanders over allowing the Biden campaign to pick and choose what questions he would answer.
In her defense, however, it’s not as if it made a difference; this was the program on which the president declared himself to be a woman of color.
“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, the first black woman to serve with a black president,” Biden told Lawful-Sanders.
This is what the president says when he’s allowed to answer his own questions. We saw what happens when that’s not the case: the debate disaster.
What’s an even more dire thought is that this might be the best the Democrats can do.
