Joe Biden might have apologized for saying that blacks who vote for Donald Trump aren’t black, but the latest gaffe from the Democrat presidential candidate and presumptive nominee likely has Democrats wondering once again: Can he handle the demands not just of a campaign against Donald Trump, but also the demands of the presidency if he wins on November 3.
Specifially, Biden said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” This remark, to a media personaliby you’ve likely never heard of, “Charlamagne tha God,” the host of a program called The Breakfast Club, is the latest in a long line of insulting, embarrassing comments.
Whatever Biden meant by it, the interview also showed that staffers don’t want the gaffe-prone former vice president going off script. One of his underlings tried to end the interview right before Biden blew it again.
You Ain’t Black
Charlamagne opened the interview by telling Biden that he, Charlamagne, had been tough on him.
Then Charlamagne — no relation to the Holy Roman Emperor who died in 814 — noted that “right wing” media speculates about Biden’s possible dementia and asked for Biden’s response.
Said Biden, “I can hardly wait with that guy who is the stable genius.”
After pushing Biden on crime and punishment and legalizing marijuana, the non-god asked Biden about reports that Senator Amy Klobuchar is a strong contender to be Biden’s running mate. Black women, he said, are a “loyal voting bloc” and “black people saved your political life in the primaries this year, they have things they want from you and one of them is a black woman running mate.”
Biden: I’m not acknowledging anybody who is being considered, but I guarantee you, there are multiple black women being considered. Multiple.
Biden aide: Thank you so much. That’s really our time. I apologize.
Charlamagne: You can’t do that to black media!
Biden: I do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at 6 o’clock. Uh oh. I’m in trouble.
After that exchange, Charlamagne invited Biden to New York because “it’s a long way until November” and “we’ve got more questions,” which invited Biden to explain that all real black people vote against Trump.
“You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
“It don’t have nothing to do with Trump,” Charlamagne shot back, “it has to do with the fact [that] I want something for my community.”
Biden half-heartedly apologized to black Trump voters and for taking the black vote for granted.
Bizarre, Overly Aggressive
The latest gaffe from Biden continued his parade of inappropriate or overly aggressive gestures and remarks.
• In March, Biden told an autoworker who challenged the candidate on gun control that he told he was “full of s**t,” and threatened to slap him. He forgot President Obama’s last name and called the Declaration of Independence the “thing” after a confused, garbled attempt to remember its opening, “We hold these truths.”
He also confused his wife and his sister at a campaign rally and appeared befuddled when a vegan jumped on the stage at another campaign event.
• In February, he jokingly called a woman at a town hall a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
• In December, he called a farmer who asked an unfriendly question “a damn liar,” then said he was running for president because “I know more than most people know.”
• In August, he told a group of Asian and Hispanic voters that “poor kids are just as bright as white kids,” then caught himself and mentioned kids of other races.
When Anita Hill, who accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991, surfaced during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings, Biden falsely claimed she did not receive a fair hearing and believed her story. In fact, the Judiiary Committee that Biden chaired heard Hill at length, and he told Senator Arlen Specter, a liberal Republican who served on the committee, that “it was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, she was lying.”
Did Biden lie to get on the sisterhood’s good side, or did he forget a seminal event in his political career?
Ryan Grim, a writer for The Intercept, says Biden is “sundowning,” a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, while finance writer Matthew Stoller, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, tweeted that “Democratic insiders know Biden has cognitive decline issues. They joke about it. They don’t care.”
Writing at RasmussenReports.com, leftist Ted Rall flatly claimed that Biden is suffering dementia:
“Democrats are conspiring to gaslight the American people by engineering the election of a man clearly suffering from dementia,” he wrote.
Contrary to current ridiculous Democratic talking points, it is not ageist to point this out. One out of seven Americans over the age of 70 suffers from dementia. (Biden is 77.) If it’s ageist to talk about dementia among the elderly, it’s ageist to talk about immaturity among the young….
You don’t need an astronomer to know that the sun rises in the east. If you have encountered dementia, you know Joe Biden has it….
Deliberately casting a vote for someone clearly suffering from dementia, or turning a blind eye to it, or being simply unaware of Biden’s mental state, is inexcusable.
No one who has been close to someone deteriorating from that disease could fail to see the same signs in Joe Biden.
In online discussions, Biden apologists sometimes say that a senile Biden is better than an evil Trump. Is this really where we are? Congratulations, Democrats, you literally picked the worst of the bunch.
Photo of Joe Biden: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
