Joe Biden Needs Help Knowing What He Thinks

W hen the president of the United States makes a statement about his position or view of an issue, we’re supposed to be able to rely on that as an official statement of what his administration believes. Sure, presidents may garble a fact or butcher their syntax sometimes, requiring the press secretary to clear up the occasional ambiguity or misstatement later, but when the press secretary and other administration figures repeatedly have to tell people that an aging, visibly slowed president didn’t mean what he obviously said, it is time to start wondering if the president is all there and is actually in charge.

That has become a worrisome pattern with Joe Biden’s public statements. Sometimes, an appearance requires multiple “clarifications.” Sometimes, it requires flatly contradicting what the president has said. We’re back there today, on Ukraine, and also on voting rights.

Worse, after Biden yesterday shamefully attacked the legitimacy of our upcoming elections, not only did the press secretary try to convince people that he didn’t actually mean it, the party’s other leading spokespeople dug in and defended Biden’s statement — suggesting that, actually, nobody is in charge. Here is what Biden said:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m confident that we can take the case to the American people that the people they should be voting for — who are going to oversee whether your elections, in fact, are legit or not — should not be those who are being put up by the Republicans to det- — to determine that they’re going to be able to change the outcome of the election…

Q: Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election…

Q: Thank you, sir. I just wanted to clarify: A moment ago, you were asked whether or not you believed that we would have free and fair elections in 2022 if some of these state legislatures reformed their voting protocols. You said that it depends. Do you — do you think that they would in any way be illegitimate?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah, I think it easily could be — be illegitimate.

Imagine — imagine if, in fact, Trump has succeeded in convincing Pence to not count the votes.

Q: Well, I —

THE PRESIDENT: Imagine if —

Go on.

Q: In regard to 2022, sir — the midterm elections.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, 2022. I mean, imagine if those attempts to say that the count was not legit. “You have to recount it and we’re not going to count — we’re going to discard the following votes.”

I mean, sure, but — I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. It’s — the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these — these reforms passed. (Emphasis added)

Even making allowances for Biden’s chronic inability these days to frame thoughts into complete and coherent sentences, there was not much question what he was saying: He would not say that we will have free, fair, and legitimate elections in 2022, and he would reserve the right to say that they were illegitimate if the Democrats’ bills do not pass (which they didn’t, and won’t). He did not refer to the prospect of illegitimate elections as an outside outlier but as something that becomes likely “in direct proportion” to the Democrats’ bills not passing.

Following the predictable blowback from those comments, White House press secretary Jen Psaki hit Twitter this morning to tell the press not to believe what Biden told them, because he was only saying that results would be illegitimate if states refused to count the votes or accept the vote counts:

Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted. He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it. (Emphasis added)

This was also her spin on Fox News this morning:

That’s not what he said, and it’s not what the Democrats’ voting bills are about. Their scope is far broader than that, involving everything from registration to identification to the timing and location of voting.

Kamala Harris, interviewed on NBC’s Today, didn’t seem to know what position she was supposed to be defending — the hesitancy is obvious when you watch the clip — but continued to press Biden’s line and, unlike Psaki, said nothing about vote-counting; she instead talked about drop boxes and lines:

On CBS, Harris went further, suggesting that the White House was considering enacting federal legislation seizing control of state voting laws by unilateral executive order: “It is a matter of doing the work through executive orders, doing the work through the Department of Justice, which has been litigating these cases in the various states, because we believe they are a violation of the spirit of the Constitution.”

James Clyburn, Biden’s closest ally in the House and the man whose support in the South Carolina primary was central to Biden’s nomination, was on CNN this morning also sticking with Biden’s line. When asked if he’s concerned that election results won’t be legitimate without these voting bills, Clyburn responded, “I’m absolutely concerned about that.”

Attacking the legitimacy of American elections is a dangerous Rubicon to cross. A president who does so should at least know what he’s doing. But as we have seen over and over again, just because Joe Biden says something does not mean that the Biden administration agrees with him. His handlers want you to accept that he has to be helped to the right place, and they are hoping you don’t notice. But the White House should not be an assisted-living facility.