Joe Biden, the 82-year-old former president sometimes referred to as “Sleepy Joe,” rambled and occasionally shouted Monday evening during his first major speech since leaving the White House. Biden delivered the keynote address, billed as a defense of Social Security, at a conference in Chicago hosted by a disability rights organization. He also received the “Beacon of Hope” award.
It’s unclear if Biden was paid for his time. A former president would typically command a speaking fee in the low- to mid-six-figure range. Biden’s talent agency, Creative Arts Agency, did not return a request for comment.
After shuffling up to the microphone nearly 30 minutes behind schedule, Biden immediately started talking even though his walk-on music—”We Take Care of Our Own” by Bruce Springsteen—was still blaring at full volume. Eventually a technician cut the audio so the audience could hear Biden deliver a characteristically long-winded (and factually dubious) anecdote about how the civil rights movement inspired him to go into politics.
“Delaware, like Maryland, was one of those states, a slave state,” he began. “We had all the vestiges of what was going on back in the day. We were one of those states that still, I remember moving from Scranton, Pennsylvania, down to Wilmington, Delaware, when coal died. My dad moved back to where he had, he could get a job. I remember I pulled into, my mom would drive us on the Philadelphia Pike connecting Wilmington and Philadelphia. And she’d be, they lived in an apartment complex, and she’d drive us only about, it was only about half a mile to Holy Rosary School on Claymont, but it was so dangerous, she wouldn’t let us walk, because of access road. I remember pulling in, pulling into the parking lot, and I had never seen, I had never seen hardly any black people in Scranton at the time, and I was only going on fourth grade, and I remember seeing the kids going back at the time called colored kids on a bus going by, they never turned right to go to Claymont high school, I wondered why, asked my mom. ‘Why? Why?’ ‘So in Delaware they’re not allowed to go to school, in public school with white kids, honey.’ That sparked my sense of outrage as a kid, just like if there, I mean, and these young kids right here can tell you things affect them when they learn about something that’s really just unfair and unjust.”
Biden eventually got around to talking about Social Security, which was established in 1935, seven years before Biden was born. For the first of many, many times throughout his speech, Biden explained that Social Security was so much more than just a government program. “Simple dignity!” he shouted. “Everyone! Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity! Regardless of [incomprehensible]! Regardless economic [incomprehensible]! Regardless who they are!” He slammed Republicans for allegedly plotting to “cut and gut” Social Security, and suggested that “roughly 30 percent of the country … has no heart” on account of their support for Donald Trump’s agenda. “Who the hell do they think they are?” Biden yelled. “I will not go further, I’ll get in trouble.”
NBC News reported last month that Biden and his ruthlessly ambitious wife, Dr. Jill Biden, Ed.D., were eager to return to politics and help the Democratic Party “regain its viability” and win back the voters Democrats lost in no small part due to Biden’s failed presidency and his insistence on seeking reelection while cognitively impaired. They are also reportedly planning to write memoirs that no one will read.
Democrats are, for obvious reasons, not particularly enthusiastic about Biden’s return to the national spotlight. “It takes a special level of chutzpah as the man most responsible for reelecting Donald Trump to decide it’s your voice that is missing in this moment,” one Democratic operative told Politico ahead of Biden’s speech. “The country would be better served if he rode off into the sunset.”
This dynamic has been exacerbated by several new books about the 2024 election, which have revealed the extent to which leading Democrats were aware of Biden’s cognitive decline but made no effort to stop him from running again. Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, authors of Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, report that Kamala Harris aides had “developed an entire messaging plan” in early 2023 to prepare for the possibility that Biden could die in office or otherwise be incapacitated due to old age.
Former president Barack Obama was “not surprised” by Biden’s befuddled performance at the now infamous CNN debate in June 2024, Allen and Parnes write, because he “knew from experience how the job aged a man, and he could see the effects when he watched Biden on television and in their rare joint appearances.” Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, had urged Biden not to debate Donald Trump after hearing concerns from Democratic lawmakers who thought he “did not look sharp” and “suspected that his limited contact with them—and avoidance of the media—suggested an even steeper decline.”
Ron Klain, the former White House chief of staff who returned to help Biden prepare for the disastrous debate, was “startled” by how “out of it” the president was during the prep sessions, according to journalist Chris Whipple, author of Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. “He was just extremely exhausted,” Klain said. “And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was.” At one point, Biden wandered off and fell asleep in a lounge chair by the pool.
Klain did not divulge any of this at the time. In fact, several days after the debate, amid calls for Biden to drop out of the race, Klain insisted the president was “absolutely sharp, fit, on top of his game.” This was how most Democrats (and journalists) responded to questions about Biden’s age and health throughout his first term. They routinely denounced those who doubted Biden’s ability to serve another four years—an opinion held by most Americans, according to polls—and dismissed clear video evidence of Biden’s decline as right-wing “misinformation.”
Biden, who has yet to formally rule out another run for office, is still eligible to serve another term as president.
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
