Will President Joe Biden go down as the worst president in modern US history? This is for the American people to decide. Will he be the funniest commander-in-chief since the dawn of the United States? Absolutely. The genius behind Biden’s comedy over the last four years was its unwitting delivery. It was never forced. While President-elect Donald Trump always appears to be doing the cold opening of a Seinfeld episode, Biden was The Truman Show. It is time to say goodbye, so let’s dig through the memories since January 2021.
Joe Biden Fights Gravity
Gravity was Biden’s archnemesis for four years. It was repeatedly a battle between the president and the Air Force One stairs. However, he also found enemies in a bicycle and a sandbag. Indeed, the Biden presidency contained many falls, not just political ones.
In June 2022, flanked by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden attempted to describe America in a single word. It was too bad that the American people could not figure out the adjective. What was it? “Asufutimaehaehfutbw.”
Joe Biden also possesses a rare gift of seeing and speaking to dead people.
On a couple of occasions, the president detailed intimate conversations with world leaders, usually about how “America’s back” and his counterparts asking, “For how long?” The problem is that these individuals died many years ago. In one instance, he claimed conversing with former French President Francois Mitterand, who led the country from 1981 to 1995 and died in 1996. He also said he talked to former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt despite the chancellor passing away in 2015.
‘End of Quote’
In July 2022, when reading a speech off the teleprompter, the president uttered “end of quote” and “repeat the line” when complaining about Republicans’ legislative pursuits on illegal immigration.
In January 2024, President Biden visited a Wisconsin brewery to highlight his Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The English speech suddenly morphed into a different language when he said something about the beer and the Great Lakes. Here is a direct quote: “The beer brewed here… Hah ish issah use to make the brew beer here… Issh da-finer… Oooooh Earth Rider… Thanks for the Great Lakes!”
Months into his presidency, Biden made perhaps one of the most prominent gaffes of his time occupying the White House. At a CNN town hall in July 2021, Biden assured everyone they would not contract COVID-19 if they took the vaccines. “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die,” Biden said. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” His remarks were made when it was already clear the vaccinations would not stop the spread of the coronavirus.
President Biden enjoyed talking about treating everyone with dignity and respect. He suggested in a BET interview that he was getting lambasted because he picked Lloyd Austin as his Defense Secretary. Unfortunately; Biden did not refer to Austin by name. Instead, he called him “the black man.” This was not the first time he forgot Austin’s name. In March 2021, instead of saying Lloyd Austin or even the Pentagon, Biden stated, “I want to thank the secretary, the former general. I keep calling him general. My guy who runs that outfit over there.”
The National Debt
From January 2021 to January 2025, the national debt soared by more than $8 trillion. In fiscal year 2024, the budget deficit was close to $2 trillion.
President Biden would disagree with these numbers. In several public appearances, he claimed that he paid down the national debt. In October 2023, for example, he told reporters that he reduced the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over his first two-and-a-half years. Even when he focused on the budget deficit, Biden got it wrong. In April 2023, the outgoing president proclaimed that he lowered the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion.
In August 2021, Biden suffered one of this century’s most significant political public relations disasters. During a solemn ceremony featuring the dignified transfer of fallen soldiers from Afghanistan, The commander-in-chief checked his watch multiple times. This moment garnered negative media attention, even from his allies in specific alphabet networks and newspapers.
Did Biden not learn from President George H.W. Bush? You never check your watch in public!
The wildfire tragedy in Southern California has resulted in at least two dozen deaths and displaced tens of thousands of people. The economic damage is expected to exceed $250 billion. This did not stop President Biden from making light of the situation during two separate press briefings.
Biden declared at a Santa Monica Fire Station next to Gov. Gavin Newsom: “The good news is that I’m a great-grandfather as of today.” Days later, he told the vice president to “fire away,” though there was “no pun intended.” Not sure how to react, Harris responded with one word: “Indeed.”
The Debate That Ended a Presidency
President Biden’s debate performance against the Republican nominee effectively ended his re-election hopes. Despite the rest of the public seeing this cognitive decline for years, Biden’s supporters in Hollywood, social media, and mainstream press understood what everyone else noticed. Put simply, Biden appeared as the “elderly man with poor memory,” Special Counsel Robert Hur had described in his report on the president’s mishandling of classified documents.
The nail in the coffin? When President-elect Donald Trump said this to CNN’s Jake Tapper: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of the sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Indeed, Joe Biden has given the history books and content creators a long list of bloopers, gaffes, and other blunders typical of a screwball comedy. Even before becoming president, Biden was quite the linguist and policy wonk, telling folks about “trunalimunumaprzure,” “nexnelsrent,” and “badehkefkher.” For that reason if no other, he will be missed. Godspeed, Mr. Biden. Godspeed.
