For President Joe Biden, the Detroit rally on May 19 was like dozens of others. Nothing was exciting about the speech he delivered, nothing new to be heard by the audience, and, like every other speech the President has delivered recently, it was a rambling voyage of incoherent lies filled with borderline racist overtones and terrifying predictions of life under Donald Trump.
Speaking at the Detroit NAACP’s 69th annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, Biden told supporters about his long history of activism with the civil rights movement. While he neglected to mention his history of pushing for segregation while he was a senator, he did choose to leave his fabricated story of being arrested while visiting Nelson Mandela out of his speech.
Most of the speech was fear-mongering about what would happen under Trump’s second term, calling his political rival “unhinged” and reminding diners that Trump was a terrible president because he was dealing with the beginning of the pandemic and was, like all Americans and even most medical experts, uncertain as to the path forward as COVID-19 spread in his last year in office.
The usual January 6 “insurrection” was revisited, along with dire warnings about Trump’s “threat to democracy.”
It was the same speech Biden delivers everywhere he goes, and, like all the rest, this one was peppered with inconsistencies, verbal missteps, and outright lies. His handlers were forced to issue nine corrections to the official transcript, some of which were doozies.
It’s no surprise that Biden doesn’t know where he is. What continues to surprise Americans, however, is he doesn’t recall who he was. During the speech, he suggested he was the Vice President under Barack Obama during the COVID-19. He added that then-president Obama advised him to travel to Detroit to “help fix it” during the pandemic.
He also touted Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which he claims saved families $800,000 a year in annual premiums. The transcript was corrected to read $800 a year, a figure many Americans drowning in premium payments and high deductibles would still call “false.”
Some of Biden’s gaffes were his usual verbal slips, such as calling the January 6 protestors “irrectionists” while condemning Trump for calling them patriots and calling for pardons. Biden could never hope to beat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s slip, however, when he called the protest an “erection.”
Biden claimed that Black women “have three times more likely to die” from pregnancy-related complications. He also took the opportunity to misquote Trump as calling for “bloodshed,” a vastly different term than the “bloodbath” the former president had predicted would befall the country’s automotive industry if Biden’s policies continue.
While receiving a lifetime achievement award from the NAACP, Biden proudly announced that he was honored to receive the organization. He also called the organization the “NAAC” and coined a new phrase when he said his visit to Morehouse College was “truly inspiresing.”
However, one misstep hit a little too close to the truth when Biden boasted that he was fighting “corporate landlords who keep rents down.”
Regarding speeches, this one ranks a little lower on the gaffe meter than most. During the State of the Union address, Biden claimed every American voted against his “American Rescue Plan” and dramatically claimed that threats to democracy must be defended.
He again read prompts from the teleprompter as part of that speech, trying to get the audience excited by mumbling, “Four more years, pause.” When boasting about his vaccination scheme, he transposed “720 million” Americans from the actual data, 270 million.
And ever an equal-opportunity gaffer, Biden omitted the “T” when discussing his fight for LGBTQ freedom in America.
In all, the State of the Union Address required 13 corrections. In comparison, when former President Trump delivered his address, no corrections to the official transcript were needed.
During the first four months of 2024, the White House was forced to make 148 corrections to Biden’s speeches. Some were surface flubs, like confusing pronouns like “we” and “he.” Others were odd, like confusing seniors who have disabilities as having “diabetes” instead. He even misrepresented his favorite talking point, the overturning of Roe v Wade, as overturning Roe v Ward.
Americans look forward to a Biden/Trump debate, but not because they will learn anything new about the candidates. The entertainment factor alone will ensure record numbers of Americans tune in to watch Trump talk circles around a floundering Biden.
