President Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening to a voting public that overwhelmingly, according to polls, lacks confidence in the president’s ability to perform at the level of what’s expected.
That didn’t stop the president and his handlers from giving us a sneak peek of his upcoming SOTU speech. Biden’s Twitter account posted an image Monday morning that showed the first page of his speech, but one word in particular set the social media world on fire.
In the photo of his speech binder, which revealed how Biden would open the speech tomorrow night in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the word “pause.”
Getting ready. pic.twitter.com/UhERyDuxTO
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 6, 2023
The response to the image, especially the instruction for Biden to “pause,” reminded us of previous occasions when Biden read such directions in speeches that were not meant to be read aloud.
“‘[pause]’ Lol no one takes you seriously,” writer J.T. Lewis tweeted.
“[pause]”
Lol no one takes you seriously
— JT Lewis (@thejtlewis) February 6, 2023
Do you think Biden will mess up during his SOTU speech?
Yes: 98% (191 Votes)
No: 2% (3 Votes)
Immigration lawyer Matthew Kolken tweeted, “Make sure you don’t read the word inside the brackets Mr. President.”
Popular meme account Carpe Donktum retweeted Biden’s photo of the speech, writing, “LOL. If someone handed me a speech that had [pause] written down in it, they would be fired before they left the room. They think you are an idiot, and they are right.”
The mockery continued in the same vein, relentlessly. But it’s not without historical precedent. Biden tends to get in his own way during important speeches.
What immediately comes to mind was a speech in December when the president, flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Bacerra, said, “end of quote, repeat the line” in the middle of his delivery.
Joe Biden finishes reading a sentence from the teleprompter with “…end of quote. Repeat the line.”pic.twitter.com/haS5pIldDh
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 8, 2022
The Daily Wire mocked the president’s photo with a throwback to June 2022, when a Getty Images photograph revealed that Biden is provided extremely clear instructions on his notes, including when he’s supposed to sit, as the New York Post reported at the time.
👀 White House instructions to Biden: “YOU take YOUR seat.” pic.twitter.com/PyqN0zW3n8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 23, 2022
The Daily Wire, noting the cookies on a plate in the president’s photo, tweeted Monday, “YOU eat YOUR cookie.”
YOU eat YOUR cookie https://t.co/SbVUprYUE7
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) February 6, 2023
It’s not just reading words that shouldn’t be read or instructions that look like it was meant for a child, either. Biden has a consistently terrible time reading the teleprompter in general, making practically every speech a side story revolving around his almost guaranteed gaffes.
In October last year, during a speech regarding his plans for a student loan forgiveness program, Biden directed the entire country to the wrong website as he struggled to read a website address from the teleprompter.
“Joe Biden spells out the letters in ‘dot,’ as in the punctuation, while reading the name of a website off the teleprompter,” Greg Price tweeted at the time.
Joe Biden spells out the letters in “dot,” as in the punctuation, while reading the name of a website off the teleprompter.
pic.twitter.com/EqpfLdSuSc— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 17, 2022
In November last year, Biden struggled to find his words during a news conference in which he spoke about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“No, no, I’m just saying. I just — I just found it interesting that, ‘Biden is being apop — apoc — acop — Biden is being extremist,’” the president said, growing frustrated with himself at the same time.
What just happened? pic.twitter.com/gs6keZbihE
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 9, 2022
Sadly, there are countless other instances when Biden was defeated, in some form or another, by a teleprompter and speech notes. And sadly for America, there stands a historically high chance that we’ll be back Wednesday morning covering not the meat and potatoes of his SOTU address but, instead, all of the parts of the speech he botched.
