Confused Biden wanders behind podium, stares at the floor as Jordanian king speaks
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A confused-looking President Biden paced back and forth behind King Abdullah II of Jordan Monday, apparently unsure of where to stand ahead of the royal’s remarks.
“Your majesty, over to you,” Biden, 81, told the king after welcoming him to the White House.
As Abdullah prepared to deliver his speech, the president shuffled around behind him and the podium, gazing down at the floor as if looking for a mark indicating the proper place for him to stand.
Biden waffled between two spots before settling on what was initially his first choice, to Abdullah’s left and in front of the Jordanian flag.
The president’s indecision appeared to throw off the king, who at one point looked over his left shoulder expecting to see Biden, who wasn’t there.
“I switched sides on you,” Biden said, before moving over to the left side of the now-smiling king.
Biden’s latest episode of onstage confusion comes days after special counsel Robert Hur opted against recommending criminal charges against the president related to his handling of classified White House documents, in part because a jury might view Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden couldn’t recall the years he served as President Barack Obama’s vice president or when his son Beau Biden died, according to Hur’s report.
RNC Research, an X account managed by the Republican National Committee, seized on the gaffe, clipping the video with the caption, “BIDEN: What am I doing? Where am I going?”
“The world is laughing at US,” Andrew Giuliani, a former Trump administration official and the son of the former NYC mayor, wrote on X, sharing footage of the strange moment.
“Don’t judge his mental acuity. Judge him by his ability to get things done, like stand where the tape is and do so on the appropriate side of your invited guest,” radio host and political strategist Melik Abdul sarcastically remarked on X.
Steve Flesch, a golfer on PGA Champions Tour, was among several X users who criticized Democrats for “rolling him out there” in the hope that the public “will believe he’s ‘fine.’”
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“Shame on them. This is elder abuse,” Flesch charged.
Some on social media came to Biden’s defense, arguing that the incident wasn’t all that alarming.
“Biden’s age is concerning, but he’s very obviously looking for the floor marker for the camera shot,” X user Josh Fields asserted. “They’ll usually place a piece of tape on the ground. They do this in movies, plays, TV, pressers, etc. I’ve seen other actual concerning things, this isn’t one of them.”
Public polling over the past year has consistently shown that large majorities of voters are concerned about Biden’s mental fitness for office.
Currently, 86% of Americans believe Biden is “too old” to be president, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday and conducted after the release of the Hur report — while 62% said so of former President Donald Trump, 77, who is seeking a rematch against Biden in the November election.
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