In a wholly embarrassing moment for the most powerful man in the world, President Joe Biden was subjected to begging an audience for a positive response during his St. Patrick’s Day speech at the White House.
The telling incident came as he delivered remarks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on the contributions of the Irish to the U.S.
Biden told the gathering that there are millions of connections between the U.S. and Ireland. These include 100 years of diplomatic ties and a host of similar values.
Joe Biden begs his bored crowd to clap:
“You can clap for that, please."pic.twitter.com/KYTDoDupzP
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) March 17, 2024
Then he digressed. “Ireland now is one of the top ten investors in the United States economy. And our countries stand proudly for liberty and against tyranny. We stand together and oppose Russia’s brutal war of aggression in Ukraine.”
Then Biden surprisingly added, “You can clap for that, please.”
Eventually the White House audience rewarded the president’s demand with polite applause. But it is hardly a sincere response when the commander in chief is forced to ask for approval.
This recalled similarly awkward situations where First Lady Jill Biden and Republican Jeb Bush begged for a crowd response in past speeches. But this was the U.S. president.
The Democrat, whose mental faculties are obviously in sharp decline, gave distressingly mixed signals last week concerning an inflammatory speech by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
During Biden’s meeting with Varadkar, the president lavished praise on Schumer’s ill-advised diatribe blasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden stumbled through his response “Senator Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staff, he was going to make that speech, and, uh, he, uh, I’m not going to exag — er — elaborate on the speech, he made a good speech.”
The president then stammered that Schumer raised a “serious concern” shared by many Americans.
Despite his misstated defense of the fellow Democrat, the majority of Americans clearly stand behind Israel’s fight against Hamas terrorists. But the president chose to side with his detractors, most likely to attempt to regain their approval.
That, for Biden, is getting tougher to come by these days.
