It’s less than three minutes, but it’s plenty.
This has been called a “make or break” moment by some of the dimmer members of the media. It could be break, but there’s no way it could possibly be “make.” As my Trump-Deranged sister said, Biden doing one interview, taped, only a half-hour long, mid-day with a presumably friendly interviewer without crashing proves nothing. She wondered why anyone, including Biden’s campaign, would think it would. All the interview could do, she said, was hurt Biden. But ah, replied her sage older brother: This is for the idiots and the Biden-defending reporters and pundits (but I repeat myself). If the interview goes smoothly, they will hold it up as definitive evidence that Joe is ready to riff on everything from nuclear fission to the politics of Tierra Del Fuego.
Well, the question was academic: it didn’t go smoothly. Political handicapper Nate Silver saw the clip above, and immediately wrote that Biden should resign.
[Now I see that the whole interview is up. I’ll finish this post, and then come back and add to it.]
Observations:
1. Silver is right. Now, the clip isn’t as bad as the worst of the debate, but it’s not reassuring. Biden is shaky, takes one long pause for no discernible reason, and the contrast between the President and his quick, clear-talking interviewer is striking. George is no spring chicken: he’s 63. He seems like he’s 23 next to Biden.
2. I hereby apologize to George. He showed no mercy. I thought he would be in on a whitewash job. Clearly he wasn’t.
3. I also thought the fact that the interview was taped made it unreliable. If Joe crashed like he did early in the debate, all ABC had to do was say “Cut! Let’s start this again, Joe.” They didn’t, or if they did, what they cut must have been really bad.
4. There is the possibility that ABC and its Boy Wonder want to sink Biden, or at least let him sink himself.
Verdict: The interview only makes Biden’s position shakier. It was a desperation move that failed.
UPDATE: I watched the whole thing. Again, idiots might be convinced, because Biden’s non-responsive argument that he’s “done” a lot of wonderful stuff as President will resonate with those in denial. Biden obviously was given a pre-scripted dodge line about “every day” as President being a cognitive test for him. Yeah, good one, Joe: answer the damn question.
He refused to take a cognitive competency test, he said, because “he didn’t need one.” How gullible do you have to be to accept that? Biden won’t take a cognitive test because he knows he’d fail….and so do his own cognitively- competent aides and supporters.
The rest were appeals to authority, like the partisan economists who say he’ll be more effective handling the economy, followed by his denials of polling results, lying about polling (Biden was never behind in the 2020 election polling; he also kept saying that this year’s polls showed him “ten points behind.” Never. Never even close to that number.) These are the kinds of casual misstatement that are “lies” when Donald Trump makes them.
Somehow, Biden seems to think that him calling Trump a “congenital liar” means he’s mentally fit. It was also fascinating that the President kept emphasizing the “Trump is a liar” theme (another obviously programmed tactic) while throwing out many well-debunked statements himself. Trump never told people to inject bleach into their arms. How has Biden faced down Putin? How does he call a Mid-East peace plan an achievement when there is little or no chance of it being adopted?
And what does any of this have to do with the main point of the interview: Is Biden up to the job for the next four years?
One more salute to George: he refused to let Biden duck the issue, but Biden still kept ducking. He also didn’t “factcheck” Biden—I’m sure Republicans will note that—but that wasn’t the mission at hand.
The full interview doesn’t alter the verdict above at all. Anyone whose support of Biden was enhanced by this evasive performance, complete with odd pauses and rambling tangents, is in the grip of intense confirmation bias.
One way or the other, Biden is toast.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack wrote, “The interview only makes Biden’s position shakier.”
Based on that clip, I’m not so sure it makes Biden’s position shakier but it’s damn sure that it doesn’t make Biden’s position any better.
Jack wrote, “It was a desperation move that failed.”
That’s exactly how everyone should view this interview.
I’ll check out the whole interview later.
Is anyone keeping a tally of:
1) democrats openly calling for Biden to step out
2) democrats openly calling for Biden to seriously consider his options
3) democrats openly rallying around Biden in support
4) democrat remaining strategically silent
?
This reminds me of the movie Valkyrie about the July 20 plot to oust Hitler from control of Germany.
Begun with the simple dishonesty communique “Der fuhrer ist tot”, the plotters sought to enact a series of automatic and coordinated military actions to get key elements of the nazi regime and military in place and on their side, so that by the time it was realized Hitler wasn’t actually dead, the coup elements would already have control and most of the elements on their side would have a fait accompli to go along with the ouster.
How much behind the scenes wrangling are Biden regime loyalists doing to shore up support and how many hopefuls are behind the scenes calculating the odds of a successful “ouster” of their own.
The Democrats face a very very dire near future. The last of the broadly “likeable” democrats (that is of the older theoretically moderate bent) are dying off and of the younger generation if there are moderates, no one has ever heard of them, and the known ones are genuine socialists – not just Rooseveltian nanny state technocrat progressives.
The party realignment, which began one or two election cycles ago, which will affect both parties in significant ways will probably affect the Democrats the hardest.
As the socialists split off, they’re going to recognize they have incredibly diminished electoral influence and have to begin making populist appeals to a certain subset of currently Republican voters. I’m not going to name what that coalition will look like because it will be dangerous and ugly.
The remaining Democrats will also find themselves diminished but free of baggage can start becoming closer to normal again and maybe can grab currently disillusioned moderates/independents.
(I mean, I fundamentally accept that whatever chaos is happening behind the scenes, the democrats will make sure they look completely calm and in control in a few months)
Anyway, if Stehpahandnlosous did this, then the Clinton “faction” of the DNC essentially put a hit out on the sitting president and this was it.
Which is probably bad, as I would assume Biden would ultimately stem from that wing of the Democrat party.
It was wrong of his nurse not to button his shirt back up after checking for a heartbeat.
Just forced myself to watch the clip Silver referenced. What was Trump’s line from the debate? Something along the lines of “I don’t know what he just said. I don’t think he knows either.” That was a random collections of sentence fragments unlike anything I’ve ever seen. This guy needs to be placed in an Alzheimer’s facility.
Can’t any of the evidently ubiquitous “Democratic donors” pull together twenty or thirty million dollars and give it to the Bidens, together with an agreement not to prosecute Hunter for anything and a promise to have Kamala pardon Joe and Hunter and the whole family if Joe resigns this weekend?
3. I don’t trust them not to edit. Leaving out some pauses here and there would look suspicious and inspire “conspiracy theories”
It reminds me of “The King’s Speech”. After George VI manages to give a speech for the angels, his speech therapist tells him he slipped a little at one part.
George tells him he had to do it at least once, “so they’d know it was really me”.
4. There is the possibility that ABC and its Boy Wonder want to sink Biden, or at least let him sink himself.”
Stephanopoulos is an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
PWS
It was Seinfeld night at Yankee Stadium yesterday.
Isn’t Seinfeld a Mets fan?
PWS
Yeah, but yesterday was the anniversary of the first show, and George Costanza worked for the Yankees.
I have read how Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968 suffered a stroke and was replaced. Aides made him believe that he still governed the country for two years. Each morning a special edition of the newspaper was created for him and Ministers would attend meetings to fool the ex-dictator into believing he was still in power. The 25th Amendment could be activated to depose President Biden and with a fake Oval Office, helicopter and plane simulators and various actors to play foreign leaders, President Biden wouldn’t know the difference.
Or how about a fictional film about a President Brendon.
Joe isn’t deciding anything, it is Jill. And she’d know.
The statement “red wave” was frequently used in regards to the predicted results of the 2022 congressional elections.
His mind is so far gone he can’t tell the different elections from each other. Which is no surprise to those who don’t lap up what the main stream media peddles endlessly.