It was Biden’s big screen test, but in truth, he blew it before it started.
A couple of hours before going on stage, the president had a “Putin” moment: he mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Zelenskyy as “President Putin.”
It was already the mistake of the day.
Biden could have led a successful NATO conference, but it was a fantastic moment to define his performance for the screen-scrolling generation, precisely the one he needs at his side.
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Joe Biden talked about the economy, foreign policy and “domestic division” while presenting his speech.
His difficulty, at this point, is an audience that cannot listen to a sentence to anticipate what he will say next.
He was asked about Kamala Harris and mistakenly called her “Vice President Trump.”
Like Putin’s gaffe, it was a mistake anyone could make. If Biden himself had achieved it a couple of years ago, he would have gone unnoticed.
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His problem now is that every sign of illness, big or small, feeds an established narrative, one that tells the story of a stubborn old president, coddled by a government machine that doesn’t listen to a growing crescendo of concern for his mental health.
Over the course of the hour-long press conference, he really stood his ground.
As a politician talking about politics, he seemed very comfortable at 81 years old. On the subject, he spoke clearly about his mandate and ended with the certainty that he was “the best qualified to govern and win.”
The uncertainty is “was it good enough?”
Not for Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who called for the president to resign just minutes after the news conference ended.
On the night of the big press conference, the big question now is: how many will follow?
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
