In an interview when he could scarcely afford to make a mistake, President Joe Biden appeared to say in haltering comments that he was proud to have been "the first Black woman to serve with a Black president."
Clearly, he was referring to his own vice president, Kamala Harris, and not himself. And he, not Harris, was Barack Obama's vice president.
Biden correctly boasted earlier in the interview on WURD radio in Philadelphia Thursday that he had appointed the first Black woman to the Supreme Court and picked the first Black woman to be vice president.
But he later told host Andrea Lawful-Sanders: "By the way, I'm proud to be, as I said, the first vice-president, first Black woman ... to serve with a Black president."
He apparently intended to say he serves with the first Black vice president in U.S. history and that he was the first vice president to serve with a Black president.
Biden also inaccurately claimed to be the first president to be elected state-wide in Delaware, when he apparently meant he was the first Catholic elected statewide as senator in Delaware. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, won the presidential race in Delaware in 1960.
This is absurd. It was abundantly clear what the president meant. This would be considered a perfectly normal speech pattern for any other person in America, and has certainly been normal for Joe Biden for his entire career.
— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) July 5, 2024
What are we even doing anymore. pic.twitter.com/OP3BG4BBCd
Though the stumbles may have gone largely unnoticed earlier in Biden's campaign, everything the president now says is being carefully scrutinized after his muddled debate against Donald Trump was so disastrous that Democrats are discusssing replacing him as the party's presidential candidate.
Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Biden's re-election campaign, called the criticism of Bden's interview "absurd."
It was "abundantly clear what the president meant," she wrote on Twitter. "This would be considered a perfectly normal speech pattern for any other person in America, and has certainly been normal for Joe Biden for his entire career."
This is absurd. It was abundantly clear what the president meant. This would be considered a perfectly normal speech pattern for any other person in America, and has certainly been normal for Joe Biden for his entire career.
— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) July 5, 2024
What are we even doing anymore. pic.twitter.com/OP3BG4BBCd
It's still far from clear if Democratic leaders will attempt to boot Biden from the presidential campaign, who might replace him, and if he would cooperate.
