No, Joe Biden did not wander off during a live interview: As part of the longstanding Republican campaign to show that he’s senile or has dementia, opponents of President Joe Biden are now accusing him of wandering off the set of a live interview on MSNBC. However, it was clear that the interview was over when the president got up.
The Joe Biden Attacks Won’t Stop
The idea that the 80-year-old President Joe Biden is too old, or possibly even dementia-addled, is a big part of Republican messaging heading into the 2024 campaign. And those claims have continued with something that happened at the end of an interview he gave Thursday with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace.
Joe Biden has also often been criticized for rarely agreeing to live, on-camera interviews, but he did one of those with Wallace this week. Per Fox News, Biden “could not wait until the commercial break to flee the set of a live televised interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.”
The interview went on for about 20 minutes and began by covering the Supreme Court decision earlier in the day that outlawed race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
At the end, per Fox’s writeup, “Biden got up from his chair and took the scenic route off the MSNBC set, walking behind Wallace as she teased analysis of her interview to viewers.”
Greg Kelly, the Newsmax host who formerly worked for Fox, presented the moment in an even more misleading manner on Twitter, posting a four-second clip of Biden walking off that omitted the part, just before that, which made clear that the interview was already over.
Many conservatives on Twitter shared Kelly’s dishonest framing, while Twitter influencer Jackson Hinkle also boldly lied, stating that Biden “wandered off mid-interview on live National TV today.”
Indeed, Wallace and Biden had already thanked each other and shook hands as the president began to stand, and the interview was unambiguously completed at the time that he walked off the set.
Sure, it looked a bit awkward, and Joe Biden was probably supposed to go in the other direction when he walked off-set after the interview, so as not to walk behind the live shot of Wallace talking.
But no, contra Fox’s framing, Joe Biden did not “flee” the set. He’s the president, and presidents tend to have busy schedules that cause them to leave places in a hurry.
MSNBC seemed to acknowledge that the moment of Biden walking behind Wallace was an awkward visual; their official Twitter account posted a gif of Biden leaving the set with the phrase “POTUS out.”
In a separate web story, Fox News ripped Wallace for neglecting to ask about the legal travails of the president’s son Hunter, and for “ giggling in admiration of the commander in chief.”
In addition to the Supreme Court decision, topics of the interview included the 2024 Republican race, the Justice Department investigation of January 6, the mutiny in Russia, and the question of what Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Biden’s late Senate colleague and Wallace’s onetime boss, would think of the Republican Party today.
“Well, Mr. President, we don’t get a lot of presidents through this studio,” Wallace said in the interview, per Fox. “Consider it your chair, consider it an open invitation. [There’s] going to be a lot of things on people’s minds and I hope you’ll look at this as a place you can come and talk about anything that’s on your mind.”
Wallace, who prior to her television career worked in Republican politics, was a George W. Bush White House staffer and also worked on McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008; during that campaign, she famously clashed with Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Sure, the interview was undoubtedly friendly, but not particularly different from most of Donald Trump’s Fox News interviews in recent years, with the likes of Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, although Bret Baier’s recent sit-down with Trump was certainly an exception to that rule.
Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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