Biden's rehabilitation tour won't change what we've seen: He's not fit for the job
One press conference where the president didn't completely bomb isn't enough to move past all the evidence that he's not doing well physically or mentally.
Ingrid JacquesPresident Joe Biden’s “big boy press conference” – dubbed that by a Bloomberg reporter and used by his own White House press secretary and national security communications adviser – did nothing to quell fears, to put it mildly.
This was Biden’s first solo press conference since last fall, and it was timed to the end of a multiday NATO summit in Washington.
Biden didn’t do himself any favors at the end of the summit, and shortly before the press conference, when he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” – the same Russian leader who invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.
While the world affairs discussed at the summit are vital, the only thing on people’s minds is whether Biden is up to the job. And that’s what reporters asked him about at the press conference, which started an hour later than scheduled.
In his prepared remarks, which he read from a teleprompter, he said that "this moment matters.”
It does.
With Biden mess, Republicans win:Trump heads into GOP convention looking pretty darn good
Biden remains adamant he's 'getting the job done'
It is obvious that despite a growing chorus of Democratic and media voices telling Biden that it’s time for him to ditch his reelection campaign, the president has decided that he’s not going anywhere.
As he said at the press conference, he plans to “keep moving” and there’s “more work to finish.”
Biden did OK (although he’s set a very low bar for what OK looks like) in answering most of the questions, the vast majority of which centered on Biden’s health and ability to run the country.
A few two-part questions tripped him up, and in an early response, he referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”
He also did his creepy whisper at various points during the event, and definitely started to ramble as the press conference continued.
Replace Biden:I don't know who's running the country, but it's definitely not Joe Biden
Yet, one press conference where the president didn’t completely bomb isn’t enough to move past all the evidence that he’s not doing well physically or mentally.
Biden said his barometer of whether he should continue is if he’s “getting the job done.” In his mind, he said there is “no indication” that’s not the case.
Unfortunately, he’s wrong.
Voters don't share Biden's sunny self-assessment
The American people also have decided some things: Biden is too old and too frail to be president for another four years – or at all.
They’ve seen it for themselves, and the media and party elites who tried to make it seem like everything was fine have been exposed in their deceit.
In a new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 85% of Americans say Biden is too old for a second term, and 67% say he should withdraw from the race.
And a Pew Research Center survey found that just 24% of voters describe Biden as “mentally sharp.” Only 32% approve of Biden’s job performance.
Oddly, the flailing Biden campaign has decided its best course of action is to trot him out as much as possible for the press conferences and high-profile interviews that he’s eschewed throughout his presidency.
So far, that hasn’t worked to course correct public perception after Biden self-destructed on the debate stage late last month in his match with former President Donald Trump.
There’s a reason Biden's advisers have sought to keep him out of unscripted situations: The president has declined rapidly the past few years, and they didn’t want us to know.
That’s not to say there weren’t clear signs – there were, but many on the left and in the media kept what they knew under wraps, as they’ve finally started to admit. Worse, they tried to call out any attempts to highlight Biden’s struggles as a conservative conspiracy (remember the “cheap fake” controversy just a few weeks ago?).
As one reporter reminded Biden during the press conference, when he ran in 2020, he had said he’d be a “bridge” president to make the way for a younger generation.
It's too bad – for his sake and ours – he didn’t follow through on that promise.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques