When the special counsel investigating him described 81-year-old Joe Biden as a well-meaning old man with a bad memory, the US president was outraged, but botched his response by confusing Mexico with Egypt. On Thursday, about two hours before appearing at a press conference that had turned into a test of cognitive ability, Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” at a NATO summit event. That got the press conference off to a bad start. And in answering the first question, he referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.” Still, the president has insisted that he is the best person to beat Donald Trump and that he will run for re-election. “I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in this to finish the job I started,” he said.
The press conference started almost an hour late. During the time it should have taken, workers could be seen doing image and set tests, moving things around and moving nervously from one place to another. The White House gave, surprisingly, an image of disorganization and improvisation, far removed from the professionalism and solvency with which such an event is organized. And the more the start was delayed, the more often the television stations repeated the mistake Biden had made earlier, amplifying its effect. At the same time, the delay fueled speculation that the president was preparing to announce his withdrawal.
Biden appeared at a lectern, with eight American flags behind him and the decorations typical of the NATO summit, which celebrated its 75th anniversary. Part of the president’s team, including Secretaries of State Antony Blinken and Defense Lloyd Austin, were seated in the front row. In his opening remarks, Biden used television screens to help him teleprompter to read. He suffered a bit of a cough and a hoarse voice, but managed to clear his throat. In his opening remarks, he spoke about NATO’s role in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its importance for the security of the United States.
He then highlighted the fall in inflation, one of the problems that has hit his popularity throughout his mandate. On Thursday it was learned that prices fell in June for the first time in four years. He then spoke about how his measures to secure the border have reduced arrests for illegal crossings by more than half in recent weeks. And then he defended his policy in Gaza.
After speaking for about seven and a half minutes, he opened the door for questions. There was no point in raising his hand. The turns had been previously assigned and Biden read them from a list. The first was about his decision to run for re-election and about the ability of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him. That’s when he said that he would not have chosen “Vice President Trump.” [en referencia a Harris] if I were not qualified to replace him.
Aside from that lapse and the previous one about Zelensky, Biden has dealt relatively well with the questions from journalists. His thesis is that he knows how to govern, even if he sometimes makes mistakes in public. He has praised himself for his role at the NATO summit, for the expansion of the Alliance, for his handling of the Ukraine crisis… He has said that leaders of other countries have told him that he has to win the elections because Trump’s arrival would be a disaster.
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A not so brilliant success
The NATO summit has ended as expected. More military aid to Ukraine, unity with some nuances of the Alliance, increasing attention to Asia and the southern flank. It can be considered a success, although in reality everything comes prepared at the summit and there is hardly room for surprises. There were also no extraordinary achievements that would allow Biden to appear to American citizens as a great statesman.
Biden himself pointed to the NATO summit as a moment to demonstrate his presidential fitness. “I guess a good way to judge me is now that we have the NATO summit here in the United States next week. Come listen. See what they say,” he said last week in an interview with ABC News. The most viral moment to emerge from the summit, however, is when Biden confuses Zelensky’s name with Putin’s and then excuses himself by saying that the point is that he is obsessed with defeating Putin.
Joe Biden has been trying for two weeks to erase the terrible impression he made in the CNN debate against Donald Trump in Atlanta. The US president confirmed that day the worst fears of those who believed that, at 81 years of age, he is not in the best shape to be re-elected and lead the world’s leading power for another four years. Despite Biden’s efforts to dispel doubts, neither the memory of the televised encounter fades nor the debate about his continuity ends. The pressure on the president is increasing on the political, media and financial fronts.
Biden had presented the interview with ABC News, along with other lesser-profile interviews he also gave last week, and the press conference on Thursday as key moments to regain the initiative. Friday’s interview did not go too well. Biden did not flounder as he did in the debate, but he had problems completing some of his arguments. On the other hand, in recent days it has become known that two interviews he had given to radio stations had been a kind of pantomime in which the White House had provided the questions and suggested editing the answers.
The press conference remained, but lowering the bar to the level of whether the president is able to answer a few questions without making a mistake is almost conceding defeat. In this sense, he said: to The Wall Street Journal a Democratic congressman, Adam Smith: “Are we really having a serious conversation about whether our candidate can hold a press conference? The very fact that we are having that conversation at this stage of the campaign tells us everything there is to know about what needs to be done,” he said.
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