USA 2024, two more disturbing gaffes for Biden: speech repeated twice and no hand to Lula
The list becomes more and more endless. The gaffes, Joe Biden’s mistakes and blunders continue. But they are more than just mistakes and embarrassing situations. Yes, because if seeing them or reading about them can certainly make you smile, in the United States they are causing a lot of concern because they seem to confirm the fact that “Sleepy Joe”, as he was cruelly renamed by Donald Trump, may not be able to run for re-election to the White House in the 2024 vote. Or, even if he were to do so as he has always said he intends, raises profound questions about his ability to lead a country crucial to global fortunes.
But what has Biden done this time? This is a “double”. First episode: during an election campaign reception in Manhattan, repeated a speech about the 2017 Charlottesville riot and his decision to run for president in 2020 within minutes of each other and almost word for word. During remarks at the rally hosted by billionaire real estate heiress Amy Goldman Fowler, the 80-year-old president recounted how he was enjoying retirement after two terms as Barack Obama’s vice president when “in August of 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia, came along.”
“Remember those people who came out of the camps literally carrying torches, with Nazi swastikas, holding them forward, chanting the same vicious, anti-Semitic bile – the exact same bile – bile that was being chanted in – in Germany in the early 1930s.” And a young woman was killed. A young woman was killed.” Biden later said, according to an official White House transcript, that “the former man (then-President Donald Trump) was asked, ‘What did you think was going to happen?’ He was the incumbent president. And he replied, “I thought there were very good people on both sides.” And I say this sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, that’s when I decided I would run again.”
After recounting how his extended family pushed him to challenge Trump, the president started telling the story again. Again, exactly from the beginning. And exactly the same. Unsettling. Biden has consistently stumbled into gaffes during public statements, and his allies have attributed these incidents to a chronic stutter. However, other occasions have led to accusations that the commander-in-chief is cognitively incapable of serving a second four-year term.
In July, for example, Biden taped notes to his lap as he welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog into the Oval Office, instead of looking the head of state in the face. In September last year, Biden asked Rep. Jackie Walorski to stand up and be recognized at an eventapparently forgetting that Walorski had died in a car accident the previous month — and that he had released a statement upon her passing.
But, be careful, there is also a second episode from the last few hours: Biden actually forgot to shake hands with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Lula, before leaving the stage after a joint event. The gaffe occurred after Biden’s speech on workers’ rights at the United Nations in New York, when he shook hands with International Labor Organization Director-General Gilbert Houngbo, who was also on stage, and then stopped to greet the audience before slowly turning and walking away. Lula approached Biden as if to shake his hand, before noticing that the president was starting to walk in the opposite direction. He then turned and waved his arm towards his side of the stage and walked away, appearing irritated.
Last week Biden was also the protagonist of other repeated gaffes during his trip to Vietnam. First calling Hanoi a “third world” country, then going into a convoluted and confusing response about Xi Jinping during the press conference, which was even cut to a jazz song by his staff while he was still finishing speaking. Signs that are really agitating the Democrats themselves in view of 2024.
Subscribe to the newsletter
