Joe Biden will keep being Joe Biden – saying stuff that is really odd.
But how far can he go and not get in trouble?
A few months back he tested that limit.
Joe Biden Keeps Saying the Weird Stuff: President Joe Biden’s comments about the way nurses have treated him in the past a few months back were strange, to say the least. And even to this day, people are a little weirded out by them.
Biden was in Virginia at the end of February to speak about healthcare, when he told a story about a nurse named Pearl Nelson.
“She’d come in and do things I don’t think you learn in nursing school,” Biden said. “She’d whisper in my ear, I couldn’t understand, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down and actually breath on me to make sure there was a human connection.”
Starting any story with “she’d come in and do things I don’t think you learn in nursing school” is risky business, especially for a sitting president.
Joe Biden in particular has been accused in the past of creepy behavior, so he might want to avoid stories or sentences that sound like the synopsis for an adult film.
Ultimately, Biden’s nursing story is pretty harmless. It’s weird. It’s definitely funny. He kind of mumbles the story in a way that makes him seem old.
And if I were Biden, whose age is a pressing issue in the minds of voters, I wouldn’t be telling stories about nurses leaning in close to make sure I was still alive.
That’s the kind of story that puts an emphasis on Biden’s advanced age – at a time when Biden should be actively working to counteract the perception that he is too old for a second term.
Regardless, the right’s online reaction is over the top.
Joe Biden: The Internet Response
One Twitter user pointed out that “Biden has told this story before,” while sharing a clip of a Biden interview in which he states: “I had nurses at Walter Reed hospital who would bend down and whisper in my ear, go home and get me pillows. They would…actually breathe in my nostrils to make me move, to get me moving.”
Yeah, okay, good catch.
At least Biden is consistent with respect to retelling the adventures he’s had within the American medical system.
Radio host Jenna Ellis had a hotter take on Biden’s nursing story. “How does the Cabinet watch this and NOT invoke the 25th Amendment??”
Ellis asked in reference to the process by which the Cabinet can remove a sitting president from office.
I can appreciate that Biden’s comments would raise some eyebrows or some laughs, but I think you’d have difficulty justifying the invocation of the 25th Amendment, for the first time in U.S. history over this.
“This man has lost his mind. Good thing he’s not in charge of a nuclear arsenal or something like that,” another Twitter user wrote.
Again, Biden’s comments were weird and amusing, but they do nothing to suggest he’s incapable of serving as commander-in-chief.
A few of the responses were spot-on, however. “What a strange thing for a President of the United States to say,” KCEN news anchor Kris Radcliffe said, accurately summing it all up. My personal favorite take is from Ted Cruz’s communications advisor, Steve Guest, who said: “President Joe Biden making it weird for everyone.”
Biden does, occasionally, make it weird for everyone. But making it weird for everyone is not cause to invoke the 25th Amendment, and it is not proof that Biden is too old to serve as president.
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Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
