He didn’t even understand the question?
Less than a month before one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency is supposed to take effect, President Joe Biden was asked on Thursday if he’d given any thought to reversing course on a policy that’s going to swell the flood of illegal immigration that’s already reached historic proportions.
He answered about something completely different.
In a statement released by the White House shortly after he spoke, Biden admitted his mistake. But by then, it was too late.
The moment came when Biden was meeting with reporters at the White House and was asked if he was having second thoughts about his decision to stop invoking Title 42, a law that makes it easier to deport illegal immigrants because of public health concerns.
Biden’s response focused on a separate subject entirely — the Monday ruling by a federal judge in Florida that ended the Biden administration’s mandate requiring masks for travelers on public transportation, such as airplanes and trains.
Asked about ending Title 42, Joe Biden starts talking about mandating masks on airplanes… pic.twitter.com/K1qUjib9bA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 21, 2022
“What I’m considering is continuing to hear from my, uh, my — first of all, there’s going to be an appeal by the Justice Department,” Biden said.
“Because as a matter of principle, we want to be able to be in a position where if, in fact, it is strongly concluded by the scientists that we need Title 42, that we’d be able to do that. But there has been no decision on extending Title 42.”
That would have been a dodgy answer even if it had anything to do with the question. But what Biden had clearly done was confuse one of the few remaining tools for immigration authorities to hinder the flood of illegal migrants with a widely detested mandate forcing Americans to wear masks aboard airplanes.
That’s not the behavior of a man a sane country wants making decisions in the White House.
Follow up question, “Sir, may we take you to a doctor?”
— Baxter’s Person (Stop/This) (@OnIowa4Evermore) April 21, 2022
Invoke the 25th immediately
— Achilles (@AchillesBTW) April 21, 2022
Senile
— Bobby G (@BobrockGavrock) April 21, 2022
Naturally, liberals turned out desperately to try to defend Biden’s gaffe, but even the White House admitted it was indefensible.
“I want to clarify that, in comments at the conclusion of my remarks this morning, I was referring to the CDC’s mask mandate and there is no Department of Justice action on Title 42,” Biden said in a written statement distributed less than two hours after the briefing, according to The Hill.
That’s not a clarification. It’s not even a correction.
It’s a tacit admission that the man who has the most powerful job in the world was incapable of understanding a question about one of the most important issues facing the country he was elected to serve. It’s an admission he has no business being in office.
(Maybe the president missed it, but for the record, the Justice Department has already filed an appeal of the judge’s ruling, as CBS News reported Wednesday, a day before Biden spoke.)
The Biden White House has been forced to walk back too many embarrassing, potentially dangerous statements by the 46th president in the 15 months he’s been in office, whether it was demanding Russian President Vladimir Putin be removed from office or telling American soldiers they were on their way to the battlefields of Ukraine.
But this isn’t simply Biden “speaking from the heart” or talking off the top of his head.
This is a man who was asked about an issue that’s going to affect millions of Americans on the border and in the interior, in the immediate future and for generations to come. And he didn’t even understand the question.
But this is the man Democrats wanted in the White House?
The midterm elections can’t come soon enough.
And neither can 2024.