Joe Biden struggled to read a statement in favor of school reopening yesterday and then took a few questions from reporters selected by his staff. On the way out, he recognized Peter Doocy as a reporter who asks him hostile questions and stopped to take his question as well. I took pages of notes, but there is no substitute for watching the video.
Biden seemed to me to be slurring his words. Early in his remarks, for example, I heard Betsy DeVos come out “Bessie DeVos.” To my ears, the slurring continued throughout. He comes across as a feeble old gentleman.
To reopen schools, Biden supports the dishing out of billions of dollars. He is unhappy with FEMA. As always, we need smaller classes, and therefore more teachers, yada yada. He wants the federal government to spend $200 billion to reopen the schools K-12. He cites the precedent of the Obama stimulus package of 2009 that was such a roaring success.
We need more psychologists, yada yada, to deal with the stress created by the lockdowns. You can say that again! Listening to Biden is itself a source of anxiety.
The epidemic is Trump’s fault. Biden was on top it from the git-go. Now we need the federal government to spend more money to support the reopening of every kind of post-secondary educational institution. Happy days are here again, or right around the corner in a Democratic administration.
He struggled to articulate a demand that President Trump stop his boasting at about 9:45. He seemed to be riffing. At least the demand required no federal funding itself, but it was linked to the alleged need for federal funding for schools.
By my lights, the questions and answers were a train wreck. The man who was murdered by the Antifa suspect Portland — it was his fault, with an incoherent reference to possible charges in the event that they “meet legal requirements,” or something like that. You be the judge.
Biden put it this way: “I think what happened in Portland, where a — one of the Trump guys riding along in vans, inciting responses, shooting rubber bullets, I guess, or paintballs, apparently there was someone shot by someone in the crowd, with a bullet. Killed. I think that person should meet the legal requirements, whatever that calls for, be investigated, and it should follow through on what needs to be done.”
On the Jacob Blake case in Kenosha, the officer needs to be charged. Biden doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of Kamala Harris. And he supports law enforcement.
What would he do about violence in the cities? Unlike Trump, according to Biden, he wouldn’t incite violence. Unlike Trump, he won’t call out any rioters of the Marxist persuasion out either.
Biden also baldly rewrote his support for a national mask mandate. Now he would only pressure state and local authorities to do his bidding. “I’m a constitutionalist,” Biden declared. “You can’t do things the Constitution does allow you the power to do.” Breitbart goes to the tape here.
He was prepared with written responses to certain of the questions. He appears pathetic as he struggles to locate and recite them.
Here is the whole thing if you can stand to watch it short of a federal subsidy for therapy.
