It was June 10 and Joe Biden, the President of the United States, was attending a Juneteenth concert at the White House. Everyone was dancing around him, including the vice president, Kamala Harris, but he, dressed in an impeccable blue suit, is standing still, looking forward. Everyone moves and dances and claps, but he just smiles for a full 30 seconds.
The event went viral, and Biden could be seen standing still, with a lost look, on social networks and international portals. And this new gaffe – as Americans call errors or blunders – once again raised suspicions about the state of the Democratic president who, by all accounts, will compete for re-election against his predecessor, the Republican Donald Trump.
The millionaire former president is not free from blunders either, and they are not even many years apart. While Biden would end his second term at 86 years old, Trump would do so at 82, considering that this Friday he turned 78. But those of the current president are more bombastic.
That moment lived in Washington was not the only one in recent months. By May 20, Biden claimed that a Hamas hostage was in the White House during the celebration of American Jewish Heritage Month. According to the president, the American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, currently held captive by Hamas, was in the government house. “My administration is working tirelessly to free the remaining hostages. And today Hersh Goldberg Polin is here with us,” he said, then retracted.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance on the 14th of the same month, the president noted that inflation was “at 9% when I arrived,” repeating something he had said to CNN. When he took office, and according to the Consumer Price Index, this indicator was at 1.4% year-on-year at the time of taking office, in January 2021.
In April, while giving a speech supported by a teleprompter, he read “pause,” but it was a prompt and not something to say out loud. In February, meanwhile, he mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as “the president of Mexico.” Ironically, at this press conference the US president refuted a harsh report by lawyer Robert Hur in which Biden was described as an “old man with a bad memory.”
A day earlier, he noted that he had been Barack Obama’s vice president during the Covid-19 pandemic. “And when I was vice president, things were a little bad during the pandemic,” he began. “What happened was Barack told me, ‘Go to Detroit and help fix it.'” Biden’s last month as vice president was January 2017, years before the global health crisis.
Another alarm was triggered by The Wall Street Journal, which on June 4 published a report in which it stated that during a meeting with congressional leaders, the president spoke so quietly that few understood him; he must have read notes to highlight obvious points; He made very long pauses between ideas, and closed his eyes for so long that some thought he had “disconnected.”
S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, played down these issues, telling Reuters that “we all make mistakes, and the likelihood increases with age. “That has nothing to do with the trial.” According to the academic, “none of us would survive a surveillance camera 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
There is another last assumption fail, the most recent of all, which has been the subject of debate in the United States. It is a video that went viral on social networks where you can see the leaders of the seven most important economies in the world, meeting at the G7 in Italy, with Biden apparently lost.
It was during a parachute landing that, while the world leaders applauded while looking straight ahead, the American president turned to his left, without applauding, and began to walk away from the group. He raises his thumb, and the host, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, crosses in front of everyone present to tap him on the shoulder and make him return to focus on what appears to be a member of the Italian Army.
The government response came from the White House Deputy Press Secretary, Andrew Bates, who fired on social networks: “Murdoch’s media (in reference to the communications magnate and main shareholder of Fox News and the New York Post) “They are so desperate to distract from Joe Biden’s record that they just lie.”
According to the official, they showed “an artificially reduced frame to hide from spectators that they had just seen a skydiving demonstration” and that his surprising and solitary turn was due to the fact that he was “congratulating one of the skydivers.”
This Friday, CNN claimed that “right-wing media used a deceptively cropped video to maliciously claim that President Joe Biden walked away during an event with other world leaders at the G7 summit.” The aforementioned media added that “in the full, unedited video, Biden briefly stepped aside to give a thumbs up to several skydivers who had landed behind the group, along with a parachute rigger who was kneeling on the ground to pick up one of the parachutes and the French flag.”
Independently of that, and taking the errors to figures, a report by the Daily Caller detailed that during this year alone, Joe Biden has committed at least 148 failsas they could read from official White House records.
Clyde Wilcox, professor of government at Georgetown University, asked Third that “Joe Biden has always made verbal errors and has always stuttered. But he is getting a little worse, especially when he is tired.”
And he added: “However, Trump is much worse. Watch the video in which he talks about a battery and a shark on a boat…” He refers to a rally in Nevada where the eventual Republican candidate assured that “they” are promoting an initiative that would force boat manufacturers to use electric motors, which has not happened so far. Then, far from criticizing environmental or fuel policy, the former president completely deviated from the topic.
“By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, have you noticed, a lot of sharks?” he began. “Today I saw some guys justifying it. Well, actually they weren’t that angry. They bit the young girl’s leg due to the fact that they were, not hungry, but misunderstood who she was. These people are crazy. He said there is no problem with sharks. They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now. She really she was decimated and other people do a lot of shark attacks.” And then he resumed his speech about electric motors.
Although it is not the first time that he refers to this last topic, it is the first time he refers to sharks. Furthermore, the confusing translation occurred in a state where there is not even access to the sea.
At the moment, everything indicates that Joe Biden will be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party, because he has the support of almost the entire political establishment. Polls predict a close battle, where the latest Reuters/Ipsos gave a marginal distance of two percentage points to the Republican standard-bearer. But what if Biden decides to drop out?
In conversation with Third, John Zogby, founder and president of Zogby International, one of the most prestigious pollsters in the US, noted that “unlike Donald Trump’s supporters, the majority of President Biden’s voters choose him because they despise the other option. The combination of Democrats who want him elected plus those who fear Trump keeps their support solid.”
And he added that while “there is very little enthusiasm for the current president,” there is also “little chance that he will be denied the nomination due to his dominance in the primaries.” “But there is always the unforeseen, some event that could force him (or Trump) to abandon,” he acknowledged.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed a detail that could be key. With 41% of the preferences leaning towards Trump, and 39% for Biden, another 20% indicated that they had not chosen a candidate yet. This, in Zogby’s opinion, is key for the final months of the campaign, especially considering the debate between the two, scheduled for June 27 on CNN.
“I think the debate will be crucial. There are both undecided voters and what we call the “double-haters”, that is, the approximately 20% who really dislike both candidates. Any mistake, misstatement or outrageous comment could tip the balance in what is essentially a tied race. It will not take many changes of opinion to tip the balance,” said the electoral expert.
On the other hand, the question should be asked if there is a plan B among the Democratic ranks in case Biden decided to step aside. Although it is unlikely, since the re-election candidate dominated the Democratic presidential primaries, local media continue to speculate about it.
If he were to withdraw, despite having the overwhelming majority of the 3,936 delegates necessary to secure the Democratic nomination, the name to replace him would have to be chosen at the Democratic National Convention. This will be held in August, specifically in the city of Chicago.
There are some names that are being polled, such as Vice President Kamala Harris or California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has risen in the polls. “Newsom (or anyone else) could become the nominee only if something forces Biden to drop out of the race. Right now, Biden has more than enough delegates, as well as the support and infrastructure of the party to dominate him,” John Zogby told this newspaper.
Although Harris is the logical choice not only because of her closeness to Biden, but also because she was the first female, African American and South Asian vice president – which would bring the African and young vote closer – there is a list of possible substitutes.
The aforementioned Gavin Newsom, close to both Biden and Harris, promises to be one of the most promising in the Democratic ranks. But there is also Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In addition to taking control of the state legislature in the 2022 midterm elections, she is a strong supporter of abortion rights, even urging Biden that she advance such policies.
Amy Klobuchar, senator from Minnesota, has also appeared in that underground race as a possible successor to Biden. In fact, in the New Hampshire primaries and in line with the argument that neither Biden nor Trump are completely convincing, Klobuchar surpassed the president and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Less than five months before the elections, and with the race still open, every detail seems to be of vital importance to ensure the stay or return of the candidates to the White House. And although the gaffes They had already been the subject of analysis during the previous presidential campaign, it seems that this time the media attention is even greater.
