The Biden campaign has a huge problem with their candidate, and they’re desperately trying to do something about it. Last week, we learned that Biden’s walking routine has been changed to keep him out of view of the public. Instead of walking solo, his handlers are now flanking him to and from Marine One, in order to block the view of his “halting and stiff gait” or potential stumbles. This wasn’t the first intervention either.
Last year, the White House quietly started using shorter stairs for Biden to board and depart Air Force One in order to reduce the risk of any embarrassing incidents. In addition to the shorter stairs, just last week it was reported that Secret Service agents are being positioned at the bottom of the stairs as an extra precaution. In March, Biden was caught wearing “maximum stability”sneakers—designed to help keep him from falling—instead of dress shoes.
But, even these interventions aren’t enough. His public appearances continue to be a problem. Democrats had been hoping that Biden’s State of the Union speech would reset his campaign, but that didn’t work out as they hoped. He had a brief bump in the polls that didn’t last long, and Donald Trump appears to be pulling away again—both in national and battleground state polls.
So, now Biden’s handlers have come up with a new strategy to protect Biden. According to a report from NBC News, the plan is to shorten Joe Biden’s speeches.
As President Joe Biden ramps up his re-election effort, his campaign is also scaling back how much he says on the trail, part of a larger new strategy to hone a sharper message he’ll take into the general election, according to Biden aides.
The less-is-more approach aims for quality over quantity when it comes to the president’s public appearances, aides said.
“There’s a strategic advantage at this point in the race to boiling down your message to the three or four most salient, compelling arguments for why President Biden should be re-elected,” TJ Ducklo, the Biden campaign’s senior adviser for communications, told NBC News. “That will often translate to the stump [speech] being whittled down to its sharpest, most dynamic form. That’s what you’re seeing.”
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But, not even NBC News is buying the Ducklo’s claim this is about “quality over quantity” and more efficient messaging.
“The approach also has the appearance of a strategy aimed at minimizing the potential for Biden to make mistakes in a razor-close election,” NBC News admits. “Some of Biden’s verbal missteps have occurred when he’s talking at length, veers off the prepared text or answers a reporter’s question when that wasn’t part of the plan.”
Shorter, crisper remarks from Biden are part of his campaign’s broader strategy of having him appear more in smaller settings that the president’s aides believe serve him better than large, traditional rallies with voters.
Some of Biden’s advisers have been pushing for him to go even further in attempts to sharpen his public appearances. They’ve argued for the president to replace prepared campaign remarks entirely, in favor of less scripted retail stops and punchier, digital content where he speaks directly to the camera.
The problem, of course, is Biden. He seems to be in denial about his cognitive decline, and routinely deviates from his prepared scripts, thinking he can handle off-the-cuff remarks. But those efforts typically have disastrous results.
If the liberal media doesn’t buy the excuse for this new strategy, the public certainly won’t either. But, perhaps the bigger issue here is that if Biden’s campaign is trying to limit Biden’s speaking time to minimize embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, then it seems increasingly unlikely that his campaign will agree to Biden debating Trump.