In his first-ever presidential press conference yesterday, Joe Biden showed why such events are apt to be few and far between.
Fresh from days of coaching from his handlers which included an actual dry run, and armed with cheat sheets and a pre-determined list of 10 questioners, most of whom proved more activist than reporter, Biden limped through what was clearly an ordeal and what a Red State writer termed “elder abuse.” The whole affair was surreal, as everyone concerned joined in a collective fantasy that this man is capable of being the president of the United States.
With Biden, it’s hard to know where to begin. Expectations of his public performances have been lowered so far by the media that any appearance where he manages to avoid dissolving into a puddle on the stage floor is viewed as a triumph.
Well, yesterday, for an hour and two minutes, he did avoid puddling on the floor–but not by much.
Asked whether his reputation as a “moral, decent man” was responsible for the migrant rush to the border, he insisted that not only is the rush not his fault, it’s not even a rush at all, at least not an unusual one. “It happens every single solitary year,” he said.
Actually, it doesn’t. According to the Border Patrol, February showed an increase of 61 percent in children crossing the border alone over January (Biden insisted the increase was only 28 percent). Overall, the U.S. is expected take in an unprecedented 17,000 minors this month.
Biden at one point claimed, “We’re sending back the vast majority of families who are coming” to the border. Actually, only 13 percent of families are being sent back. The others are almost surely here to stay.
As part of his “blame Trump” strategy, Joe charged the 45th president of the United States with allowing children to “starve to death,” a bald-faced lie one would have thought beneath even him.
Asked when he’d allow reporters to see the CBP shelters (aka “cages”) on the border, he answered, “I don’t know, to be clear.”
But it was in response to a non-immigration-related question, about the filibuster, that brought out the lost and floundering Joe who knows not who nor where he is:
I believe we should go back to a position with the filibuster that existed when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago [sic]. . . The best way to get something done, if you hold near and dear to you that you like to be able to … anyway. . . .
That final “anyway” trailed off into a despairing note of abject defeat, the kind you imagine he would utter while signing surrender papers to the Chinese.
Overall, opinion at The Hill found the questions “meek and vague . . . mostly cotton-candy questions from a mostly marshmallow media.” As for Biden’s cheat sheets and overall delivery, it concluded:
[The] president largely depended on multi-page notes that he curiously took with him to the podium. No president in the modern era has done that before, and when Biden began thumbing through his notes before slowly reading from them at times, it was uncomfortable to watch. . . .
Uncomfortable and depressing, considering this man is the purported “leader of the free world,” a phrase that grows more risible every day.
For more, see The Hill.