One common symptom of senility is forgetting what one has said and so repeating the same thought or story over and over again. Such is what President Joe Biden apparently did at a dinner with donors, telling the story about why he decided to run and then, just minutes later, telling the exact same story as if he was telling it for the first time.
For reference, accusations of mental feebleness have dogged Biden since he first entered office, but have grown consistently louder as his mental health seems to deteriorate further by the day, something particularly obvious when he has to speak off the cuff.
Such was apparently the case at the donor event, as Biden was speaking to the crowd about why he ran for president, then repeated the same exact story in nearly the same words just minutes afterwards, as even the White House Press Pool confirmed.
“After briefly touting his economic record, POTUS reflected on his decision to seek the presidency. He told the story about the events of Charlottesville in 2017 as the reason for his campaign. A few minutes later, he told the story again, nearly word for word,” the press pool document says.
**BREAKING**
White House Press Pool confirms Biden told donors "the same story word for word" just moments after telling it the first time. pic.twitter.com/hPMpU5r7e4
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) September 21, 2023
According to The New York Post, which elaborated on the event, Biden apparently repeatedly told the story about how the protest at Charlottesville in 2017 led him to decide to run for president, as he though Trump’s existence was shown to by reprehensible by that day and Trump’s comment that there were “fine people” on both sides.
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“You remember those folks walking out of the fields literally carrying torches, with Nazi swastikas, holding them forward, singing the same vicious, antisemitic bile — the same exact bile — bile that was sung in — in Germany in the early ‘30s. And a young woman was killed. A young woman was killed,” Biden began.
Continuing, Biden said, “The former guy [then-President Donald Trump] was asked, ‘What do you think would happen?’ He was the sitting president. And he said, ‘I thought there were some very fine people on both sides.’ And I mean this sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, that’s when I decided I — I was going to run again.”
Catnip for Democrats of the sort with whom he was cavorting, as it lets them paint themselves as being the guardians and paladins of “our democracy” while doing nothing more than backing the “safe,” not particularly radical candidate who will be less than harsh with their financial interests. But then he showed his age by repeating the same exact story minutes later.
“You know, you may remember that, you know, those folks from Charlottesville, as they came out of the fields and carrying those swastikas, and remember the ones with the torches and the Ku — accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan. And in addition to that, they had — there were white supremacists. Anyway, they were making the big case about how terrible this was. And a young woman was killed in the process,” Biden said for a second time.
“And my predecessor, as I said, was asked what he thought. He said, ‘There are some very fine people on both sides.’ Well, that kept ringing in my head. so, I couldn’t, quite frankly, remain silent any longer. So, I decided I would run. And it became — I ran because I thought everything this country stood for was up for grabs for the first time in my career,” he once again added.