newYou can listen to the Fox News article!
For President Joe Biden, the bar could not have been lower, and the stakes could not have been higher, than Thursday night’s primetime news conference.
He barely made it through and likely lived to fight again, but the stakes for him and the country remain just as high.
Yes, he has had stumbles and gaffes — earlier, at a NATO event, he introduced Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” and later, at a press conference, he confused his own country’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, with Donald Trump — but on the scale of Biden’s gaffes, they are more than minor.
Biden used the word “anyway” at least nine times to pause during press conferences
More disturbing was his soft, whispery voice, his occasional stare into the distance, his slowness to finish words and his awkward reference to first lady Jill Biden being upset with him.Still, these were not the sort of wow-worthy moments Biden had two weeks ago in Atlanta.
So did Biden stand alone on stage, answering question after question about his mental and physical fitness, and do enough to save his candidacy, and even his presidency?
President Biden drew ridicule after mistakenly calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “Putin.” (Photo credit: Contributor/Getty Images | Photo credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images | Photo credit: Bonnie Cash/Getty Images)
Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, didn’t think so, posting on X just minutes after the press conference that Biden should back out. But the honest answer to whether Biden has succeeded in getting his campaign back on track is a disappointing “maybe.”
We know there was at least one conversation about Biden’s future between Democratic Party heavyweights Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. How impressed were they with Biden’s performance? We don’t know.
Biden aides and Democratic officials privately acknowledge that things are going to get much worse.
The fundamental problem remains unresolved, because there is still ample reason to believe that we may see Joe Biden in a debate again in the four months between now and Election Day, even if we don’t see him at a press conference on Thursday.
The Biden team would certainly like to believe that this is a test he passed and that we should all put an end to this scandal, but with Biden himself and his mental health still dominating the conversation, that seems highly unlikely.
In fact, it was clear that there was very little news to report at the president’s first solo press conference in several months. other than the president’s fitness for duty, or lack thereof.
Click here to read more FOX News Opinion
Under normal circumstances, when asked if he could have done anything differently in handling the Gaza conflict, he would have said he wished Israel’s war cabinet had listened to him more, which would have led to talk of Biden once again betraying Israel.
But that ridiculous answer, like every other answer he gave, was completely irrelevant: no one paid attention to the content of the words, only whether the President of the United States could say them well and in order.
The entire focus of the country’s politics cannot be on whether its most powerful person is having a good or bad day, not for the next four months, much less the next five years.
That’s not sustainable. We can’t have the entire focus of our country’s politics on whether its most powerful person is having a good or bad day, not for the next four months, let alone the next five years. But that’s still the situation we’re looking at.
Click here to get the FOX News app
For Democrats, this was the worst performance Biden could have given — not bad enough to spark a flood of calls for him to resign, but not bad enough to stop the public from having questions and worries about the president’s health.
So we’re still stuck in the situation we were in before Biden took the stage: Even if he were to stop the bleeding immediately — and it’s not entirely clear that he did — he would still be politically wounded, if not mortally.
Amid growing concerns about his age and health, Joe Biden has always stubbornly responded, “Look at me. Mr. President, we are watching. In fact, that’s all we see, that’s all we can see, and there’s real reason to believe that’s never going to change.
To read more articles by David Marcus click here
