In case you somehow missed it, Joe Biden traveled to Detroit on Sunday to deliver a speech before the NAACP in which he attempted to apply some bandages to his bleeding poll numbers among Black voters. To put it mildly, things did not go well. Biden’s rambling, confused persona was back on full display as he got a number of words wrong and told fanciful stories from his past that were obviously untrue and in at least a couple of cases physically impossible. But as with all official appearances, the White House was forced to release a transcript of the speech. This involved a cleanup job of daunting proportions and included nine instances of what the New York Post described as “brutal corrections.”
White House officials went into cleanup mode after President Biden delivered a gaffe-riddled speech to the NAACP in Detroit Sunday — making a whopping nine corrections to the formal transcript.
The changes fixed both trips of Biden’s tongue — such as calling Capitol rioters “irrectionists” — and flagrant retellings of history, like claiming he was still vice president during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The official transcript, released Monday, made no bones about the errors, with strikethroughs of Biden’s mistakes and the corrected comments included in brackets.
You can read the official White House transcript here. In some ways, it’s encouraging to see the staff attempting to be transparent about the boss and his many flubs. Then again, it’s not as if the work is optional. It’s a violation of federal law to falsify official government records. Yet part of me is still wondering if they are airing this dirty laundry because some members of Team Biden have seen the writing on the wall and are thinking it might be time to nudge the kindly old man with a bad memory off the stage.
The notable flubs were a curious collection of misspoke words, names, dates, and events. When Biden claimed to have been the Vice President during the pandemic, the staff is now claiming that he intended to say “during the recession.” When he called the Capitol Hill rioters “irrectionists” he was apparently supposed to say “insurrectionists.” (At least they were nice enough to spell it with an i instead of an e.) When Biden described how he was “humbled to receive this organization,” he had meant to say “award.”
Some of the words that required corrections weren’t even words at all and it looks as if the transcriptionists were forced to guess how to spell what he actually said. “Inspiresing” was meant to be “inspiring.” When he claimed to have saved families $800,000 per year in insurance premiums, that outlandish figure had to be trimmed down twice before reaching $800. (And many would argue that few people actually wound up seeing anywhere near that amount of a reduction.)
One of the flubs – assuming it really was a flub – was a dangerous mischaracterization as well as being a flat-out lie. He claimed that Donald Trump had said that if he lost in November there would be “bloodshed.” He was attempting to say “a bloodbath,” but bloodshed is a very real word and everyone understands what it means. Personally, I think Biden owes Trump an apology for that one at least, though I’m sure we’ll never see it happen.
There were more, but you get the gist of this. Biden managed to mangle the acronym for the NAACP, but that was fairly mild by comparison. The point is, Biden wasn’t speaking extemporaneously for the most part. That was a prepared speech that was handed to him and he couldn’t even manage to pull that off. They had plenty of time to practice while he was hanging out near the beach in Delaware. Did anyone even try to get him to run through it a few times or are they just handing him scripts, hoping for the best, and whiteknuckling it until the cameras turn off?
There are still a few months to go before the conventions. If the Democrats are planning to make a change, they need to already be putting those plans in motion, though I still don’t see how they can pull it off without Jill Biden stepping in to tell her husband that it’s time to retire. As far as Biden’s campaign team goes, they seem to be out of options. Keeping Joe in the basement wasn’t working and Trump kept surging in the polls. Sending him out to give speeches doesn’t seem to be paying off either. It’s almost painful to watch.