EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: “Biden at 81: Sharp and focused but sometimes confused and forgetful,” reads the headline above an article bearing five AP court stenographers’ bylines:
President Joe Biden’s conduct behind closed doors, in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in meetings around the world is described in the same dual way by those who regularly see him in action.
He is often sharp and focused. But he also has moments, particularly later in the evening, when his thoughts seem jumbled and he trails off mid-sentence or seems confused. Sometimes he doesn’t grasp the finer points of details. He occasionally forgets people’s names, stares blankly and moves slowly around the room.
Biden’s occasional struggles with focus may not be unusual for someone his age. But at 81 years old and seeking another four years in the White House, the moments when he’s off his game have taken on a fresh resonance following his disastrous debate performance against Republican Donald Trump. The president appeared pale, gave nonsensical answers, stared blankly and lost his train of thought.
The June 27 faceoff alarmed Democrats and his financial backers, in part, because Biden seemed so much worse than during the almost routine moments when he’s less sharp. And that has raised questions about whether he’s up for a campaign that’s only going to get nastier and whether he can effectively govern for another four years if he wins.
Less than two weeks ago, AP was running columns defending Biden’s acuity: Seeing is believing? Not necessarily when it comes to video clips of Biden and Trump.
“Any misinformation that seems to reinforce or resonate perceptions or dominant narratives, whether they’re accurate or not, is very effective,” said Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University who studies media, public opinion and public policy in democracy and elections.
At the G7 summit in Italy, where Biden headed after Normandy, a clip of the president watching a skydiving demonstration was cropped to make it appear as though he wandered off for no reason. A wider view of the video shows he was greeting paratroopers who had just landed. And at a Los Angeles fundraiser last weekend, a pause by Biden as he left the stage amid cheers was used to say the president froze, while Biden’s campaign said he was only stopping to take in the applause.
The clips have been especially effective at activating concerns about Biden’s competency, according to Nisbet, because he is the oldest sitting president the U.S. has ever had, and he moves with more difficulty than he once did.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician, wrote in a February memo after the president’s annual physical that he “continues to be fit for duty” and that his stiff gait is the result of arthritic changes in his spine. He said that Biden has reported additional hip pain and started using a new device for his sleep apnea, but that he showed no signs of stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or other similar conditions.
After the fundraiser clip spread online, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer blasted such negative characterizations as a tactic from those who “are so scared of losing to Joe Biden, they’ll make anything up” to distract voters from Trump’s misdeeds.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a press briefing called the videos “cheap fakes,” a term for videos edited using cheap video editing software rather than artificial intelligence.
Trump’s campaign has doubled down on the clips and circulated a meme that defined a “cheap fake” as “any unedited video of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline that the Biden administration does not want the public to see.”
They weren’t wrong, and finally the Biden administration and its media enablers hit a news cycle they couldn’t bluff its way through.
Screenshot of headline in case AP changes their mind, as they did when they couldn’t admit last week why Jamaal Bowman lost his primary:
(Classical reference in headline — to an earlier election year showstopper from AP, back in 2008.)