President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia Friday to speak at a retreat for House Democrats. As usual, the speech was full of blunders a...
President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia Friday to speak at a retreat for House Democrats. As usual, the speech was full of blunders and questionable statements.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the retreat had already gotten off to a rocky start after Democrats were forced to remain in Washington, D.C., longer than expected to negotiate a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill. The group arrived in Philadelphia around 2 a.m on Thursday.
Biden addressed the group on Friday in an attempt to promote unity and excitement for the upcoming midterms in November. But it was his all-too-frequent gaffes that stole the show.
At one point during the speech, Biden was attempting to tout the Democrats’ recently-passed infrastructure law. He began by bragging about a $65 billion investment in high-speed internet, which he said would help school children.
“This is the United States of America, we can’t be the country where for mom to get her kid on the internet to be able to do their homework has to pull into the McDonald’s parking lot,” Biden said. “I mean for real. That’s what’s happening.”
While this story seems oddly specific, his general point about the importance of internet access has some merit. However, it was his next couple of lines that really brought his sanity into question.
“This law’s gonna put an end to all of that, gonna put people in a much different position to be able to determine their own…their own judgements about when to sell their cattle, when they should…we’re just gonna change things,” Biden said.
It’s unclear why Biden seemingly jumped from internet access to cattle, and “we’re just gonna change things” is hardly a great rallying cry for his party. Still, the speech continued to get progressively worse.
Later in his address, Biden was discussing the stock market in Russia. He attempted to make his point by grabbing the podium, squinting into the camera, and speaking in some sort of creepy half-whisper.
“The moment it opens, it will be disbanded,” Biden said of the market. “Ya hear me? It will blow up.”
Last but not least, Biden defended his decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline and attempted to minimize his impact on rising gas prices.
“Folks, let’s get something straight here,” Biden said. “The Keystone pipeline was two years away and had been two percent finished. Give me a break.”
Biden was apparently trying to relay information from a recent fact check article in The New York Times. It said Republican accusations about the pipeline were misleading because it was not set to be completed until 2023, and only 8 percent of it was finished when Biden killed it.
In addition to Biden being wrong about how much of the pipeline was finished, both he and the Times are missing the larger point Republicans are making.
For one thing, even if it is true the pipeline would not have been finished until 2023, it has been over a year since Biden killed it. If not for that action, the pipeline would, at the very least, be much closer to completion than it is now.
Second, it is not just Biden’s action against the Keystone pipeline that Republicans take issue with. Rather, it is Biden’s apparent disdain for extracting American oil that present a problem.
Biden’s actions against American oil did not stop with killing the pipeline. He also issued an executive order halting oil and gas leases on federal land, NPR reported.
While this order has faced legal challenges over the past year and Biden has also attempted to downplay its significance, the intention has always been clear. Biden has no problem destroying the American oil industry in the name of “climate justice.”
Overall, Biden’s speech was characterized by multiple inaccuracies and nonsensical claims. Of course, that’s pretty much what Americans have come to expect each time he opens his mouth.
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