Following Biden’s debacle on Monday, when he stumbled through his announcement that he was nominating two women generals for four-star commands, Neal Cavuto of Fox News asked House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.): “A lot of people are beginning to wonder … is there something we should be worried about, or [is this] much ado about nothing?”
Clyburn responded:
This is much ado about nothing. I think you know as well as I do, I talked with the president about this. He has what we call stuttering.
It’s always been a problem with this president. He’s been very open with that. It doesn’t affect his brain at all. But it sometimes affects his speech. So that’s an issue that all of us know is there.
I don’t know why we keep trying to make something out of it.
What prompted Cavuto’s question was Biden’s performance on Monday:
I want to thank the, uh, the, uh, former general, I keep calling him general, my, uh, my, uh, uh, the guy who runs that outfit over there. I want to make sure we thank the Secretary for all he’s done.
What he lost on Monday was the name of his secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, who was standing next to him. And he lost where he worked: the Pentagon.
Clyburn said Cavuto’s concerns were “much ado about nothing.” But former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino disagrees:
There’s a reason Biden isn’t doing any press conferences [or] that so far [he’s] failed in his constitutional obligation to give Congress a State of the Union address: He can’t.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki struggled to cover for the fading Biden. When pressed by reporters on Tuesday asking why Biden hadn’t held a press conference yet, she answered lamely: “We look forward to holding a full press conference in the coming weeks … before the end of the month.”
But, she added, there is no firm date set yet: “We are working on setting a final date for that.”
Psaki then launched into a defense of Biden which only dug her hole even deeper:
I think the American people would understand if his focus and his energy and his attention has been ensuring we secure enough vaccines to vaccinate all Americans, which we will do by the end of May, and then pushing for a rescue plan that will provide direct checks to almost 160 million Americans.
That is where his time and energy and focus has been.
She dug her hole even deeper, adding:
Of course, any joint session speech would look different than [in] the past. We certainly intend on the president delivering a joint session speech — joint session, not a State of the Union — in the first year that they are in office. [Emphasis added.]
But we don’t have a date for that, or a timeline at this point in time.… We’ve been engaged closely with leaders in Congress about determining that.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain doubled down in defense of Biden’s stalling:
I think we wanted to get through this rescue plan first and get it done and get it passed. Then we’re going to the country.… We’re going to take a couple of weeks to really explain the plan.
I think shortly after that you’ll see him work with the Congress on a joint address that is appropriate for COVID and all of these other times we are living in.
The American people aren’t buying such phony explanations. According to the latest poll from Rasmussen, half of likely voters are “not very confident” or “not at all confident” that Biden “is physically and mentally up to the job of being President of the United States.”
More than half are concerned that Biden has yet to hold a press conference after more than 50 days of taking office. That’s the longest delay of any of the last 15 presidents.
A third of those polled don’t think Biden will last out his first term.
Andrea Widburg of American Thinker is much more pessimistic:
The worst kept secret in Washington, D.C. is that Joe Biden is suffering from serious age-related cognitive decline.
In January, although some people predicted he would remain in office for up to two years before he was gently ushered out to make room for Kamala Harris, I looked at the man and thought he was going to be retired by June.
Lately, though, Biden looks as if he’s heading for an April or May retirement.
