Six Odd Things Joe Biden Said During His Press Conference Thursday
By NBP Editorial Board | July 12, 2024, 0:30 EDT
President Joe Biden delivered a meltdown-free press conference Thursday, July 11. But he also said some strange things.
Here are six of them:
1. ‘Vice President Trump’
While answering his first question, which was about various Democrats calling for Biden to drop out and whether Vice President Kamala Harris might be Biden’s replacement, Biden referred to “Vice President Trump.”
Here’s a snippet:
Reporter: … My question for you is: How are you incorporating these developments into your decision to stay? And, separately, what concerns do you have about Vice President Harris’s ability to beat Donald Trump, if she were at the top of the ticket?
President Joe Biden: Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, if I didn’t think she’s not qualified to be president. So let’s start there. Number one. …
2. Supporting Abortion Is Kamala Harris’s Only Achievement
A reporter asked Biden to list Kamala Harris’s qualifications to be president.
Biden named only one.
Here’s the exchange:
Reporter: You mentioned that your vice president, Kamala Harris, would be ready to serve on day one. Can you elaborate on that? What is it about her attributes and her accomplishments over the last four years that make her ready to serve, on day one, if necessary?
President Joe Biden: First of all the way she’s handled the issue of freedom of women’s bodies, to have control over their bodies.
Secondly, her ability to handle almost any issue on the board. This was a hell of a prosecutor. She was a first-rate person. And in the Senate, she was really good.
I wouldn’t have picked her unless I thought she was qualified to be president. From the very beginning. I made no bones about that.
She’s qualified to be president. That’s why I picked her.
Leave aside that Biden’s answer (reproduced above in full) is an almost fact-free statement. Harris’s only actual achievement that Biden cited is supporting restriction-free abortion at any time for any reason.
3. Other Presidents Have Had Worse Poll Numbers Than Joe Biden
Explaining why he’s staying in the race, Biden made a case that he’s not in that bad shape politically.
“And I might add, there are at least five presidents running or incumbent presidents who had lower numbers than I have now, later in the campaign,” Biden said.
It wasn’t immediately clear which presidents Biden was talking about. Since polling began in earnest around the 1940s, we have had 12 presidents run for re-election. (They are Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Another president, Gerald Ford, ran for election after assuming office without being elected.)
Of the incumbent presidents campaigning for another term, only Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush struggled badly in the polls as of the summer of election year. And of those, only Truman won.
But it doesn’t matter what Biden was referring to. Given the current left-right geographical split in America, Biden is in terrible shape.
Former President Donald Trump leads Biden by 4 percentage points – 44 percent to 40 percent – according to a new Pew Research poll published Thursday.
This is a disastrous scenario for Democrats, because in order to win a presidential election in the current era, the Democrat must beat the Republican nominee by a substantial margin in the popular vote. That’s because in the modern era Democrats run up big margins in large left-leaning states like California, Illinois, and New York, while Republicans tend to win other electoral-vote-rich states by lesser margins. That’s why Republicans won the presidency in 2000 and in 2016 while losing the popular vote. Trump nearly won the Electoral College in 2020 despite losing the popular vote.
If Trump were to win the popular vote in November 2024, he’d win comfortably in the Electoral College, and possibly by a landslide.
4. Biden Is Doing Well In The Polls In Israel?
While answering a question about the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Biden criticized Israel’s war cabinet.
Capping a long answer, Biden said:
“And by the way, look at the numbers in Israel. My numbers are better in Israel than they are here. But then again, they’re better than a lot of other people here, too.”
On its face, this statement doesn’t make sense.
If we’re trying to figure out what Biden meant …
Is Biden saying that he could get elected in Israel? That he has a better shot in Israel than he does in the United States?
Although it’s not what he said, a more likely interpretation, perhaps, is that Biden meant to say he’s doing better in polls in the United States that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing in polls in Israel.
But why does that matter?
5. Biden Should Be The Democratic Nominee Because He Has A Lot of Campaign Headquarters In Swing States
Making his pitch for why he’s staying in the presidential race, Biden cited the number of volunteers his campaign has and also said:
“We have scores of headquarters in all the tossup states. We’re organized. We’re moving. That’s awful hard to replace in the near term.”
Get-out-the-vote operations don’t work if not enough people want to vote for you.
6. Sudden Mood Swing
Toward the end of the press conference, Biden suddenly shifted from calmness to anger, without any apparent provocation.
To get a sense of it, watch the video clip.
But below is a partial transcript of the outburst and some of the strange words that preceded it.
Biden started talking about what he called “civil rights and liberties, women’s rights” – by which, for each term, he meant abortion.
Then he said this:
That little button we have – Control Guns, Not Girls.
I mean the idea, we’re sitting around – and this is where Kamala was so good, as well — we’re sitting around —
[shouting]
More children are killed by a bullet, than any other cause of death. The United States of America! What the hell are we doing? What are we doing?
Earlier this week, a neurologist interviewed on NBC said flatly that Biden has Parkinson’s Disease.
“I could have diagnosed him from across the mall,” said Dr. Tom Pitts, who identified himself as a Democrat.
The only question is how far along his apparent dementia is, as well.
To determine his decision-making ability, Dr. Pitts said, Biden should take a four-hour neuro-psychological test that would measure his cognitive ability.
He said Trump should take it, as well. Perhaps so.
But only one of the two major-party candidates for president is falling apart before our eyes.
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