Joe Biden Was All Gaffes In Front of Entire Planet – Joe Biden at the G7 was genuinely showing his age of 80 years old.
President Joe Biden’s appearance at a Group of Seven gathering in Japan last week attracted plenty of online criticism recently as video clips showed the aging president struggling to speak coherently.
The videos are the latest in many Biden gaffes, suggesting that the president’s cognitive health could decline.
Why Joe Biden Was There – and Making Lots of Gaffes
President Biden flew to Hiroshima, Japan, for a three-day summit with G7 allies last week.
The president used his time at the event to discuss global economic and security issues, and went out of his way to reassure China that a conflict with the West is avoidable.
“I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about the notion that there’s going to be this conflict,” the president said during a press conference on Sunday.
Wrapping up discussions, the president said that while the United States agrees to maintain the One China policy, the United States and its allies are “more united” than they have ever been on the issue of Taiwan. Specifically, the president promised to push back against any efforts by Beijing to invade Taiwan.
While the president’s position on the One China policy may seem contradictory, there is an essential difference between the One China policy and the One China principle. Biden says that the United States recognizes the One China policy, which is a diplomatic acknowledgment that there is only one government of China. The One China principle, meanwhile, states that Taiwan is part of China and will eventually be reunited under one government.
Joe Biden and the Gaffes
Biden’s overall performance at the G7 summit was heavily criticized by online commentators and the Republican Party.
One former Republican National Committee member told 19FortyFive in an interview, “Joe Biden is an embarrassment.”
On Sunday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) shared a video of the president struggling to get his words out as he spoke about the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
In the clip, the president seems to be making a point about the national debt, but finds himself on a tangent about global warming.
“And there’s a lot of other, for example, the idea that we’re, uh, in terms of taxes that they refuse to, for example, we uh, I was able to balance the budget and pass everything from the global warming bill, anyway, I was able to cut by 1.7 billion dollars in the first two years the deficit that we were accumulating,” the president said, going on to say something about businesses paying “zero in tax.”
“In all seriousness – what is Biden talking about?” the RNC Research Twitter account asked.
The RNC also shared a five-second-long video of the president getting the name of the South Korean president wrong.
“I’ve spoken at length with President Loon of South Korea,” the president said, referring to President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Video footage of the president almost falling down a set of stairs also hit international headlines. Britain’s Express newspaper published a story about the president suffering “another humiliating blow” as he rushed to meet the prime minister of Japan, only to stumble and nearly fall down a set of stairs.
This isn’t the first time that the president has made mistakes like this at a meeting with global leaders, either. In 2021, Biden tried to correct Boris Johnson, who was then the prime minister of the United Kingdom, for not introducing the president of South Africa. Johnson had, however, already introduced the president by name. The awkward incident prompted a flurry of giggles from several world leaders during the meeting in Cornwall, England.
People Care About Biden’s Age
The president’s missteps and occasional inability to complete a sentence can easily be attributed to his age.
However, his campaign and many senior Democrats have repeatedly pointed to Biden’s history of overcoming a stutter. Voters, however, believe that Biden’s performance as president so far has been subpar and that he should be replaced with a candidate who is younger and healthier.
As of May 22, 2023, President Biden’s average approval rating according to FiveThirtyEight is just 41.8%. His disapproval rating is significantly higher, at 53.8%. Those numbers have barely improved since August, 2021, when Biden’s average approval rating dropped below his disapproval rating.
Polls also show that most Democrats don’t want Biden to run again – and those polls go back to the early days of the Biden presidency. A New York Times/Siena College poll found in 2022 that 64% of Democratic voters would prefer to see a new candidate in 2024.
Even Hillary Clinton appeared to admit that Biden’s age is an issue for voters, and that concerns about his competence shouldn’t simply be dismissed.
Speaking during an interview at the Financial Times Weekend Festival over the weekend, the former secretary of state said that Biden’s age is a “legitimate” issue that that “people have every right to consider it.”
But despite the polls, and despite Biden’s very public mistakes, the president is still comfortably ahead of his top challenger, Robert F. Kennedy, and could well win a second term in the White House that would see him step down at the age of 86.
MORE: Hunter Biden Could Finally Be Charged with a Crime
MORE: Hunter Biden: Could Be Go to Jail?
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
