How Joe Biden Turned a One-Day Story into a Weeklong Headache
The older President Biden gets, the more frequent his gaffes occur. His defenders often jump to criticize those who point out the misspeaks, the absent-mindedness, and the incoherence as cruelly mocking someone who has fought a lifetime stutter. Except when you go back and review the hours of video footage of Joe Biden as senator, and even as vice president, there was no stutter or stammer. But the tall tales, the false claims of bravado, those were omnipresent.
As Joe Biden slips further into infirmity, his voice is shakier, thinner. He constantly has trouble reading and comprehending what’s on the teleprompter in front of him and loses his place and train of thought with every speech he gives. At the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, he slipped on the word Easter, telling those present on the lawn below him to say hello to the oyster bunnies.
If you want another example of Biden’s lack of ability to tell the truth when embellishing his own background, and at the same time see for yourself how much his cognitive abilities have declined, here’s a Joe Biden then and now from 1987 and 2022 on whether his neighborhood in Delaware was Puerto Rican or not.
Obviously, both of these statements cannot be true, yet both were uttered by the same Joe Biden about his upbringing. The instances of the President creating events in his life out of whole cloth are endless, and that doesn’t even take into account all the substantive policy decisions Joe Biden has made in three-plus years, which are disastrous both here in the United States and abroad.
Every administration has gaffes. They all have PR doors into which they walk. Most competent administrations figure out very quickly how to turn those mistakes into a one-day story. The truly smart ones hang a lantern on it, admit they made a mistake, and then the story has nowhere to go and fizzles. That, however, is not the mode of operation in this administration, who is actually running it. Here is the anatomy of a gaffe that should have been able to be dispensed with rather quickly, but here we are, six days on, and we’re still talking about it specifically because of Joe Biden, not despite Joe Biden.
On Thursday, March 29th, the White House Briefing Room issued a statement by the president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. The title of the statement is A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024. It was a 635-word statement about the importance of recognizing the transgender community, how much Biden sees them, and that he is using the power of his office to proclaim March 31st as their day. The problem with that? March 31st also happened to be Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the year on the Christian calendar.
Regime media immediately came rushing to the defense of the President like an ambulance to the scene of a traffic accident. Transgender Awareness Day has been on March 31st since 2009, regime loyalists claiming to be journalists cried. This is just noise by right-wing media. The reality is this particular LGBTQ day is just one of about 145 days, weeks, and/or months that are on the calendar proclaiming something or another relating to the LGBTQ community.
There is absolutely nothing unique about March 31st in the LGBT world. It’s a made-up day to keep the lifestyle in the public’s face as often as possible, and Joe Biden put the weight of the presidency behind it in support.
By contrast, here’s the White House statement on Easter Sunday, 2024, also on March 31st.
“Jill and I send our warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating Easter Sunday. Easter reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection.
As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities. And with wars and conflict taking a toll on innocent lives around the world, we renew our commitment to work for peace, security, and dignity for all people.
From our family to yours, happy Easter and may God bless you.”
Simplistic and minimalist, which is not what Christ accomplished on this day 2,000 years ago. Notice, though, that there’s no proclamation or recognition of the day officially, being that Joe Biden is a professing Catholic. Transgendered Awareness Day? That gets the full government pomp and circumstance.
“Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans: You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong. You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-eighth. ”
Christians and Catholics alike were outraged by this. The former Apostolic Nuncio from the Holy See, Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s diplomat to the United States, called for Biden to be excommunicated for this stunt. You’d think someone at the White House would have used an ounce of foresight to see this collision coming and maybe play it a little differently than they did. Enter Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday, marking Day 5 of the story.
Jean-Pierre can declare all she wants that Joe Biden didn’t declare Easter Sunday to be Transgender Awareness Day, but you just saw with your own eyes from the White House statements that only one proclamation, one declaration by the president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., was made, and it wasn’t to mark Easter. She just flat-out lied.
At the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn Monday afternoon, Joe Biden spent a few minutes in a gaggle with reporters, and the pool reporter asked about the March 31st flap in the context of criticism coming from House Speaker Mike Johnson. Philip Wegmann, the White House reporter for Real Clear Politics, captured what Biden’s response was.
"I didn’t do that," Biden said when asked about proclaiming Easter Sunday 'trans day of visibility." Asked about Speaker Johnson's claim otherwise, the president replied, "he’s thoroughly uninformed."
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) April 1, 2024
I didn’t do that, Joe Biden said. That proclamation being offered in my name, using the power of my office, setting his hand to get done, that wasn’t me, Biden explained. At best, Joe Biden has no clue what his own communications shop at the White House is doing from day to day. At worst, Joe Biden can’t remember what he did last Thursday. Neither is a very strong selling point for another term as president. Here’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Biden’s denial of involvement in his own proclamation, guaranteeing the story lives to see Day 6.
And Speaker Johnson was back on Fox Monday night with Sean Hannity, also concerned that Biden doesn’t seem to know what’s going on in his own White House in his name, and has no clue what he’s signing.
For an administration struggling with a crisis of confidence, Transgendered Eastergate is not exactly an episode that is going to reaffirm the public’s confidence in Joe Biden’s leadership as president.
For the record, just in case the unthinkable happens and Biden is reelected, next Easter will fall on April 20th, 2025. That also happens to be National Weed Day, where cannabis users everywhere unite in a cloud of pot smoke at a Willie Nelson concert.
To the geniuses running White House communications, Jesus rolled away the stone on Easter Resurrection Sunday. He didn’t get stoned. You might want to think about what emphasis you place on two conflicting worldviews that will collide on the same day.
