More evidence has surfaced that President Joe Biden is too old to handle his office.
He no longer walks alone from the White House to the Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn. Now the president surrounds himself with aides to hide his “halting and stiff gait,” as Axios called it.
The latest on the president’s increasingly alarming infirmity, along with his frequent gaffes and false memories, likely have top Democrats and presidential aides wondering whether Biden can last through the tough campaign ahead. And even if he survives that, they surely doubt he could finish a second term.
The Short Walk
The very noticeable change is sad, for it highlights Biden’s rapid physical decline. The public is watching an elderly man deteriorate not only mentally but also physically.
“With aides walking between Biden and journalists’ camera position outside the White House, the visual effect is to draw less attention to the 81-year-old’s halting and stiff gait,” Axios reported. As well, “some Biden advisers have told Axios they’re concerned that videos of Biden walking and shuffling alone — especially across the grass — have highlighted his age.”
Weeks ago the president told aides that he’d prefer a less formal approach, a White House official told Axios. He suggested that they walk with him.
White House staffers and reporters alike noticed the sudden change in Biden’s walk routine beginning in mid-April, after more than three years in which he’d typically walked solo.
And of course, the change is about “images.” Those are “better,” Biden’s handlers think, because the Americans can’t see a man clearly physically unfit for his demanding job.
Axios also disclosed the walk data: He walked to Marine One by himself or with family five times in March. But starting last week, he was surrounded by staffers or others nine of 10 times.
The big picture, again, as Axios observed, is that “Biden’s team has focused on changing voters’ perceptions about his age in recent months.”
Indeed, the top priority of White House aides isn’t helping Biden run the country, but instead ensuring that he doesn’t fall down, Axios reported:
The White House also has taken steps to prevent the president from tripping, as he did last summer on a stage at the Air Force Academy.
Biden increasingly has worn shoes with extra support, including a pair of black Hoka sneakers.
His doctor has disclosed that the president suffers from “spinal arthritis” and “mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet” which has contributed to his stiff gait while walking. …
Besides the different footwear, he now enters Air Force One on a lower level, taking shorter stairs than the ones used on his early trips to climb to the plane’s cabin.
Biden also continues to do physical therapy and stretching exercises most days.
Last year, Biden fell three times ascending the steps of Air Force One.
Cognitive Decline
But Biden’s physical infirmity is less concerning than his mental decline.
Two days ago, giving a speech to the North America’s Building Trades Unions National Legislative Conference at Washington, D.C.’s Hilton Hotel, Biden read the word “pause,” which appeared on his teleprompter.
More strangely, in attacking former President Donald Trump, he unbosomed himself of this bizarre line:
The guy has never worked a day in a working man’s boots.
By the way, he gave me a pair of boots as a gift, by the way. I know how to put them on. I still sometimes cut the yard. The Secret Service doesn’t let me do it anymore.
The audience — and most surely Biden’s alarmed, face-palming aides — were likely still scratching their heads over that one when he delivered this one:
And, folks, the choice is clear. Donald Trump’s vision of America is one of revenge and retribution. A defeated former president who sees the world from Mar-a-Lago and bows down to billionaires, who looks down on American union workers. It’s not just he’s not supporting; he looks down on us.
I — no, I’m not joking. Think about it. Think about the guys you grew up with who you’d like to get into the corner and just give them a straight left. I’m not suggesting we hit the president. But we all know those guys growing up. We all know guys like that growing up.
The “pause” gaffe and ensuing “boot” and “straight-left” digressions followed another one of Biden’s false memories that invited the ire of the Papua New Guinea’s prime minister.
Biden claimed a tribe of cannibals on the island ate his World War 2 aviator uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, whose plane crashed nearby.
The story was utterly false, Pentagon records showed. In fact, Finnegan’s Douglas A-20 Havoc nose-dived into the sea after its engines failed. Only one crewman escaped the sinking plane. Finnegan’s remains were never recovered.
But that false memory was only Biden’s latest.
Among his others are these:
- His son, Beau, died in Iraq.
- He crossed the recently-destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, on a train.
- He was a civil rights activist.
- He began his legal career in a liability lawsuit over an explosion in which a man lost his penis.
- He was a long-haul truck driver.
- He was arrested trying to visit communist terrorist Nelson Mandela in prison in South Africa.
H/T: Daily Caller
