Biden Blunders at Two Post-Debate Events
“The Supreme Court is on the ballot this Septem- — this t- — November”
President Biden made embarrassing mistakes at two campaign events in New York on Friday and Saturday, undercutting the claims by his defenders that his debate performance was an outlier.
At a campaign reception in East Hampton on Saturday afternoon, Biden named the wrong European country in connection with a military cemetery. The White House had to clean it up afterward with strikethroughs and brackets in the transcript, as is frequently the case with Biden.
Here is how the official White House transcript renders it:
Well, then I told him how he had called the veterans who had given their lives in a cemetery in
Italy[France] — he wouldn’t go to the cemetery, and — because he said they’re a bunch of “suckers” and “losers.” Well, our son was one of those people — not inItaly[France] but in Iraq — and he died.
This is particularly egregious because Biden himself visited the cemetery in France earlier this month, on June 9, 2024, as a way of drawing a contrast with Trump.
Friday night in Manhattan, Biden stumbled through another event, as the official White House transcript makes clear:
earlier today, Jill and I visited Stonewall Inn to unveil the new visitor center, the country’s first ever within the National Park System to honor the LGBTQ community. This senator — (applause) — this center will be a source of education, art, and inspiration that preserves how history and legacy of Stonewall Uprising has been preserved. And it signifies the legacy of the leadership of the LGBT community, especially trans women of coldor — color — (applause) — who, for generations, have been at the forefront of helping realize the promise of America for all Americans.
He says “senator” when he means center. He says “coldor” when he means color.
The speech, and transcript, goes on:
I’ve also had the honor of meeting survivors of the
Q Club[Club Q] and the Pulse shootings, who remind us of why we must fully implement a significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years that I signed. …When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something is still very wrong in America. That’s why Congress must pass the Equality Act — (applause) — and codify protections forLGBQ[LGBTQ] Americans.We must act when families across the country flee the excruciary dec- — the excruciating decision to relocate in different states to protect their child from dangerous anti-LGBTQ laws, like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law…
Folks, let’s be clear: The Supreme Court is on the ballot this Septem- — this t- — November — (applause)
Unlike the debate, these are events at which Biden is allowed to read a prepared speech from a teleprompter. Even with a text, he can’t get straight on the first take whether the election is in September or November?
One might dismiss these mistakes as trivial—the verbal equivalent of typographical errors. Yet communicating clearly to the public and projecting confidence is an important part of a president’s job. It’s not the only part of the president’s job; some politicians are good at delivering speeches but make bad decisions or have the wrong priorities. But it’s an important part of the job.
Most of the press has tended to give Biden a pass on these things to the point of not even reporting about them. As I’ve noted, that provides an opening for publications like this one that let readers in on news that the left-leaning press doesn’t think is news.
Taxing big tech to pay for local news: Two bills that would subsidize local news are advancing through the California legislature.
Senate Bill 1327 passed the Senate on June 27, 2024, with 27 in favor, 7 against, and 6 not voting. It would impose a new 7.25 percent tax on gross receipts of big online advertising companies such as Google and Meta, and use the proceeds to fund journalism fellowships and tax credits to pay for employees at qualifying local news organizations. Jeff Jarvis offers some reasons why this is a bad idea: “I am concerned about government intervention in speech and especially journalism….for government to decide what news organizations qualify is itself a thumb on a scale.” Also, “It supports incumbents over innovators.”
Assembly Bill 886, the California Journalism Preservation Act, passed the Assembly on June 1, 2024, with 55 in favor, 6 against, and 19 not voting. It would basically force Google and other aggregators to pay money to qualifying publications, who’d have to spend at least some of it on “news journalists” who are “responsible for gathering, developing, preparing, directing the recording of, producing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, designing, presenting, or publishing original news or information that concerns local, regional, national, or international matters of public interest.” Google’s vice president for global news partnerships, Jaffer Zaidi, has a blog post up describing the legislation as “a ‘link tax’ that would require Google to pay for simply connecting Californians to news articles.” He calls the legislation “unworkable” and wrote, “Until there’s clarity on California’s regulatory environment, we’re also pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”
Count me skeptical of the idea that a tax-and-spend approach by the state legislature is going to rescue local news in California. The likelier outcome is rendering local publishers dependent on the legislature for ongoing renewals of the subsidies, thus eviscerating their independence. If the news organizations are wards of the state, how aggressive can anyone expect them to be in investigating the politicians who will be, in essence, their paymasters?
I can see the case by publishers who don’t want Google scraping their content without compensating them for it. But enlisting the politicians on the publisher side of the publisher-Google business negotiation is not without its own real risks.
A better approach would be to publish news and analysis that is so outstandingly good that readers are delighted to pay for it. That is our ambition here at The Editors. We aren’t looking for any help from state legislators or tax money from Google. But if you appreciate the newsletter and can spare the $8 a month or $80 a year, please support our growth and become a paying subscriber. Thanks to those of you who already have.
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Today the Philadelphia Inquirer (my hometown paper) called on Trump to drop out of the Presidential race because he lies too much. This, or course, is unlike Old Joe Biden - who only tells fibs. Today Nancy Pelosi announced on CNN that Trump has dementia. Old Joe - he is perfectly fine. These progressives clearly live in an alternate universe. It's worse than the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes." Millions of people, to their horror, watched the REAL Joe Biden perform on Thursday night. Our country can't continue on this downward spiral much longer. We must elect a stronger, cogent President.
"especially trans women of ... color ... who, for generations, have been at the forefront of helping realize the promise of America for all Americans." — Great Orators of the Democrat Party