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Strap yourselves in for the latest Joe Biden scandal that’s bound to shock the senses. The president, who’s a week older than Casablanca, has been spotted wearing sneakers on his scrawny, withered, bird claw feet. The New York Times had previously reported on Biden’s casual attire a couple weeks ago, and while normal people might’ve just assumed it’s summertime so the footwear is easy, Fox News insists this is all part of the mounting accommodations for Biden’s advanced age.
Yes, Joe Biden is so ancient he dresses like a twentysomething Silicon Valley tech bro. Once he wanders into the Oval Office wearing a hoodie and a messenger bag, we’ll know all is lost.
Fox News, of course, ran with a story from NBC News Monday about how Biden’s aides are trying to minimize the president’s age as an issue. They’re obviously doing a bang up job so far. Maybe they should plug those press leaks before giving Biden more hair plugs.
Joe Biden’s aides realized they had a problem last month when the president tripped over a sandbag — hard — at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony. Afterward, during a post-event recap, a few aides tried to figure out what may have gone wrong and how to make sure that such an embarrassing and dangerous incident “never happens again,” according to two people familiar with the discussion.
“You can’t be too careful,” one said.
Not only did I know Biden was old when I voted for him in 2020, I was also aware that he wasn’t a ballerina. Young people — even middle-aged Wonkette writers — also trip and fall sometimes. Biden is 80. I would worry if he’s not in full control of his faculties but I don’t expect that he’s physically like Keanu Reeves in the John Wick movies.
NBC News reporters Carol E. Lee, Peter Nicholas, and Monica Alba seemingly suggest that Biden is deteriorating before our very eyes, and it’s sad, really.
Apparent to anyone paying attention is that the Biden they may remember from the Robert Bork Supreme Court confirmation hearings of 1987, or the vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin in 2008, is a different man today. His gait is less steady, his speech not as fluid. He has confused Iraq with Ukraine and Rolling Fork, Mississippi, with “Rolling Stone.” At a conference last year, he looked out at the audience and called for a congresswoman who had recently died in a car crash.
If you were alive and watching Senate confirmation hearings in 1987, you’re probably not one to talk about the ravages of time on Joe Biden. Nonetheless, a skittish congressional Democrat, speaking “on condition of anonymity,” warns that the Democratic Party “needs to be responsive to what people are saying about Biden and their concerns that they have with his age … The number of text messages that I got after the president fell … I mean, my phone was blowing up. People are like, ‘Oh, this is so bad.’”
I’ll take a clumsy Biden over a spry Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley. These Democrats having second thoughts about the obviously mortal Joe Biden, who was 77 during the 2020 campaign, could’ve just as easily nominated Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Steve Bullock, Cory Booker, Tim Ryan, Jay Inslee, Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, etc. … We had a very long, transparent primary. Biden wasn’t our Mystery Date nominee.
Lee, Nicholas, and Alba write that “the White House seems to be making concessions to [Biden’s] age,” including “extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings.”
An iconic image of the modern presidency is the chief executive walking up the stairs to a majestic Air Force One, then turning at the doorway and waving. More and more, Biden is forgoing the long staircase for the shorter stairway that takes him up through the plane’s belly. (A work-around of this sort isn’t without precedent. John F. Kennedy, who at the age of 43 was the youngest president ever elected, suffered chronic back pain and was once photographed using a “cherry picker” to hoist him aboard Air Force One.)
That’s a physical accommodation. I hate to repeat myself, but Biden is 80. However, there are people half his age who can’t do stairs at all for any number of reasons that wouldn’t negatively impact their ability to run the nation. Stop with the ableism. The article literally mentions the youthful Kennedy — younger than almost all the staff of Wonkette — who couldn’t take the stairs either. And you want to point out people needing big font? That’s just about everyone here.
Biden seems to be preserving his energy in other ways. It’s customary on foreign trips for the president to schmooze with other leaders at dinners once the meetings are over. Less formal and structured than the events preceding them, the dinners offer a chance for leaders to bond, talk through differences or amplify a point. On two recent international trips, Biden has chosen to skip the nighttime socializing.
I’m more than 30 years younger than Biden, and I usually don’t want to talk to anyone either after or during my meals. Biden has proven his diplomacy skills, especially in regard to rallying the free world in Ukraine’s defense. He’s earned his quiet nights.
Nonetheless, the media has gone all in the frail, possibly already dead Biden narrative. It’s a neat in-kind donation to the Republican Party, which is set to nominate (again) a serially indicted, confirmed rapist who’s pushing 80. There’s no mystery here: I’ll take Biden and his old man sneakers.
[NBC News]
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