Just one day after President Biden delivered a State of the Union address many liberals said put to rest questions about his mental fitness, the president raised eyebrows with several gaffes in Pennsylvania.
Biden visited Strath Haven Middle School in Delaware County on Friday for his first swing state campaign stop after outlining his agenda to a joint session of Congress. There, he pitched his plans for a second White House term, promising to protect abortion rights, defending his economic record and calling for new gun control laws. He also made some unforced errors in his speech, which were ridiculed by Republicans.
“Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: Send me to Congress!” Biden shouted at one point, appearing to mix up the office he’s running for. He was a six-term U.S. senator representing Delaware in Congress before he became vice president in 2008.
Later in his remarks, Biden said, “we cut the deficit and we added more to the national debt than any president in his term in all of history, than under Donald Trump.”
BIDEN ASSAILS ‘PREDECESSOR’ TRUMP, GOP IN SHARPLY PARTISAN STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH
U.S. President Joe Biden, accompanied with U.S. First Lady Jill Biden attends a campaign event, at Strath Haven Middle School in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, United States on March 8, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Both comments were picked up by the Republican National Committee’s opposition research account and shared far and wide on X.
At another point, Biden mistakenly referred to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots as taking place on “July 6th,” and then corrected himself.
The gaffes illustrate how Biden, 81, must continue to fight off criticisms of his age and mental fitness from Republicans as the general election heats up.
The president did earn praise from many liberals for his “energetic” State of the Union performance on Thursday.
BIDEN’S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH REINFORCED MENTAL ACUITY AND AGE CONCERNS, REPUBLICANS SAY
President Biden made several gaffes during his speech in Delaware County, inclduing asking Pennsylvania voters to “send me to Congress!” (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Former CNN journalist John Harwood, known as one of the most sycophantic Biden White House boosters in the media, mocked the president’s critics for saying they were worried about his vitality.
“[T]hose Dems complaining that Biden lacks vigor and fight getting splash of cold water in the face right now,” he wrote, later adding that the “people yapping for so long about Biden not being up to the job look pretty dumb this morning.”
“My fellow Americans the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are it’s how old our ideas are? Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas,” CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem wrote, quoting from Biden’s speech. “It would seem Biden has landed on a perfect framing for the age issue.”
Left-wing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “A thought: the whole Biden-is-too-old thing was kind of a bubble, in the sense that people were buying it mainly because other people were buying it. Did Biden just burst that bubble?”
LIBERAL JOURNALISTS REJOICE OVER BIDEN PERFORMANCE AT SOTU, CLAIM IT PUTS AGE QUESTIONS TO REST
Republicans saw the speech differently. They questioned why Biden kept shouting to emphasize his points and noted that he spoke very fast at times and slurred his words.
“A lot of the time it was hard to understand what he was saying,” said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va. “He was kind of mumbling and slurring.”
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“We couldn’t understand him. He was so mad,” agreed Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan. “The volume was up and down.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, remarked the president’s annual address was “reminiscent of an old, angry man standing on his porch screaming ‘get off my front lawn.’”
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark, Julia Johnson, Elizabeth Elkind and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.