During the official White House Fourth of July celebration, President Biden made several out-of-the-ordinary misstatements while greeting the crowd with a hearty “Ho ho ho! Happy Independence Day!”
The 81-year-old president and his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, were accompanied on stage by Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.
“We gotta do what our founders did: show the world we’re a nation of dignity, honor, and just devotion to one another,” he said before telling the audience to enjoy the fireworks. At this point, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” started playing as the group made their way off the stage.
Biden even stopped partway through walking, appearing to be unsure who he should hand the microphone to. He then walked slowly toward the back of the stage, singing unaccompanied before passing off his microphone to a handler.
Prior to this speech, Biden also seemed out of it. During the White House barbeque, Biden nearly referred to Donald Trump as his “colleague,” followed by “I probably shouldn’t even say that … anyway.” Biden trailed off and slurred several times in the four minute speech.
Biden also compared the 2024 presidential race to World War I, saying, “By the way, I was in that World War I cemetery in France, and one that my colleagues, the former president, didn’t want to go and be up there.”
“One last thing, and I used to think when I was a senator, there were always congestion on the highways. There’s no congestion anymore. We go on the highway, there’s no congestion,” Biden said.
Biden exited the stage to even more applause and with a 30-second-long reprise where he said, “And so what? The way they get me to stop talking, they’ll say, ‘We just shut down all the roads, Mr. President, you’re gonna lose all the votes if you don’t get in. But anyway, I’ll be back out.”
The meandering remarks also come as party insiders are reportedly discussing removing President Biden from this year’s presidential race.
Biden had made a series of mistakes during his recent 90-minute debate with Trump, such as claiming his son Beau “died in Iraq” and that he “beat Medicare,” while also freezing up at one point.
