White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fielded many questions during her White House briefing Tuesday regarding President Joe Biden’s fitness for office in light of his troubling debate performance last week.
And the Biden team’s strategy became apparent as she came back to the same talking points again and again: Re-contextualize what people saw.
The first talking point to that end was that the president had a bad night. So it’s not that he’s in cognitive decline, but he wasn’t firing on all cylinders at the debate.
Second, Biden “knows what he’s doing” despite being slower on the draw; with age comes “wisdom and … experience.”
During Thursday night’s debate against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Biden lost his train of thought multiple times and made nonsensical statements at other moments.
One instance that received a lot of media coverage was when the president gave a rambling, incoherent answer about health care ending with, “We finally beat Medicare.”
BIDEN: “…with the COVID.. excuse me.. dealing with.. everything we have to do with.. look.. if… we finally beat, Medicare.”
TRUMP: “He’s right. He did beat Medicare. He’s destroying Medicare.” pic.twitter.com/jgVCpXUhWZ
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) June 28, 2024
During the Tuesday briefing, a reporter asked, “Is [Biden] disabled?”
Jean-Pierre responded, “No.”
She then reprimanded the reporter for shouting out his question, “You know better! Come on.”
“IS [BIDEN] DISABLED?”
Karine Jean-Pierre: “No”
???????????? pic.twitter.com/AaYrjXvxzj
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 2, 2024
At another point, the press secretary was asked, “Does President Biden, at 81 years old, have Alzheimer’s, any form of dementia, or degenerative illness that may cause these sorts of lapses?”
He then asserted before Jean-Pierre replied, that if she does not know the answer to his question, she should.
In a sharp tone, Jean-Pierre responded, “I have an answer for you. Are you ready for it? It’s a no. And I hope you’re asking the other guy the same exact question.”
????????????
“Does President Biden, at 81 years old, have Alzheimer’s, any form of dementia, or degenerative illness that may cause these sorts of lapses?”
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: “No” pic.twitter.com/g6vv6HEhtS
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 2, 2024
The press secretary did concede, “He’s not a young man. That’s why he’s acknowledging he’s a little slower than he used to be in walking and not as smooth in speaking. We get that.”
Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden will be doing a sit-down with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos over the weekend and hold a news conference next week with reporters at the NATO Summit in Washington, D.C.
She argued that these will be opportunities for the president to show the debate night was an outlier.
But that’s the problem. He’s been having these moments of freezing on stage and experiencing serious mental lapses for months.
Try as they might, the White House is not going to be able to spin Biden’s obvious decline.