Analysis: Joe Biden and the lame-duck countdown

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden, in the week before he officially will become a lame-duck president, has had a rather awkward run of late — creating problems for Vice President Kamala Harris, his possible successor.

Forced to end his bid for a second term by party donors and lawmakers, the 81-year-old commander in chief has had a few vintage Biden moments, including a confusing statement during which Republicans contended he called Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage,” along with several misstatements and even a botched ice cream order. The president, a father and grandfather, was mocked on social media for playfully biting a baby’s leg while handing out Halloween candy at the White House on Wednesday.

“It’s shocking to hear Joe Biden has had some gaffes,” said Barbara Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Why are we shocked? He’s always prone to this. This is the biggest reason he’s not the nominee.

“Biden has always gotten himself spun up or excited and said things he shouldn’t have throughout his long career in politics,” Perry said. “Sure, his speech is garbled, but so is Donald Trump’s — and, by the way, Trump is the one who says hateful things and lies all the time.”

Underscoring Perry’s point, Trump on Thursday directed violent rhetoric at former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his chief critics and the former vice chair of the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by a mob of Trump’s supporters.

So why does the soon-to-be lame-duck Biden get roasted for one word while Trump is in a toss-up race with Harris?

“That is the million-dollar question of the hour, the month, this election cycle and of the last 10 years,” Perry said during a Thursday telephone interview. “The answer is multi-faceted. Part of it is this era has been reality television meeting social media meeting a demagogue who took advantage of people’s fears and, to what would have been the chagrin of the founders, now dominates our politics — especially in a media environment that needs cheap content.”

Biden and his team defeated Trump in 2020. Yet, they couldn’t fend off the former president’s influence from the West Wing. Biden’s desire to ding Trump still creates headaches.

Harris reportedly had resisted Biden’s requests to hit the campaign trail on her behalf. But by mid-week, a Biden campaign event scheduled for Saturday in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., suddenly appeared on the schedule.

After a career marked by verbal slips, Biden created a headache for Harris on Tuesday. During a video call with Latino voters, Biden at first glance appeared to call Trump’s supporters “garbage.” That forced the White House to release a transcript that showed his remarks in a slightly different way, along with a post on the social media platform X attempting to clarify his meaning.

“And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something,” Biden said, according to the official transcript. “I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.” The White House’s transcript put an apostrophe on supporter’s.

That forced Harris to defend Biden as she delivers her closing argument to voters. Later Thursday, The Associated Press and other outlets reported that the White House stenography office objected to the press office unilaterally altering its transcript of Biden’s campaign call to include an apostrophe on “supporter’s.”

The VP appeared to both defend Biden and distance herself from his garbled comment. Asked by reporters Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, D.C., about Biden’s remark, she replied: “First of all, he clarified his comments, but let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

What might be dubbed “Garbage-gate” lingered throughout the day, now part of Harris’ final-week barnstorming. Trump and some of his surrogates pounced, trying to turn the incident into this cycle’s “deplorables” moment, a reference to Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, using that term to describe Trump’s supporters during his successful White House bid.

“I want to address the comment that Joe Biden made yesterday that said the supporters of Donald Trump are garbage. I can assure you we’re not garbage,” former NFL Green Bay Packer-great Brett Favre said during a Wednesday Trump rally. “How dare he say that. Looking out I see police officers, teachers, nurses, grandparents, students. I see everyday Americans that make this country great.”

Biden likely hopes that won’t turn into a political touchdown by Favre, who threw 508 TDs during his playing career, according to Pro Football Reference. Favre is among those being sued as Mississippi tries to recover misspent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program funds. He has repaid about $1 million he received in speaking fees the state contends he did not deliver, and the state auditor says he still owes $730,000, according to the AP.

Before the now-infamous Tuesday call, Biden headlined an official event in Baltimore — then headed to Charm City’s Inner Harbor area for ice cream at the popular Bmore Licks. There was only one problem: The shop did not offer his favorite flavor, chocolate chip.

An employee behind the counter told him, according to a pool reporter traveling with Biden, “I would have made some if I knew you were coming.” Security protocols often leave shop owners in the dark until the last moment, so the ice cream-loving commander in chief had to settle for one scoop of vanilla and one of chocolate.

‘Spiderman meme’

The awkwardness didn’t end there.

Among the reasons some Democrats wanted Biden to step aside was his inability to sell his economic record to voters. He tried before dropping out in July. Since then, his efforts largely have been left to Harris — and his own written statements.

“Today’s [gross domestic product] report shows how far we’ve come since I took office — from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression to the strongest economy in the world,” Biden said in a Wednesday statement. “While critics thought we’d need a recession to lower inflation, instead we’ve grown around 3 percent a year on average, while inflation has fallen to the level right before the pandemic.”

He also contended “congressional Republicans are proposing across-the-board tariffs that would cost families nearly $4,000 a year, reignite inflation, and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Except: It’s Trump who is calling for sweeping tariffs. Some GOP members have even pushed back, saying tariffs could hurt the U.S. economically and diplomatically.

Meanwhile, a sketch of Biden’s schedule for the week released Sunday included “campaign calls” on Thursday. But his official daily guidance for that day did not mention those calls. What’s more, a press briefing for Thursday was scrapped. Around 6:15 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, the White House announced Biden did hold campaign calls, but not with voters.

Instead, he phoned Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington and Democratic Governors Association Chairwoman Laura Kelly “to discuss the state of races across the country,” the White House said in a statement. He also called North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein to wish the Democrat “luck in his gubernatorial race,” according to the statement.

White House press aides did not respond to an email with several questions, including if the changes were related to “Garbage-gate.” The press office called a “lid” at 4:05 p.m. Thursday, meaning Biden would not speak publicly on a day his operation went largely dark and silent.

It is possible Biden’s aides did not want to field any more questions in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room about his gaffe, nor did they want audio or video of new verbal missteps to surface from campaign calls, said one Republican strategist.

Ford O’Connell said Thursday the White House’s silence was not surprising, saying of Biden: “He’s been a PINO for a while now — president in name only.”

“Think of that Spiderman meme. If she loses, [Democrats] are going to point the finger at him. When, in fact, they should be pointing the finger at themselves,” he said during a telephone interview about Biden’s party mates who pushed him out of the race. “And then there’s Biden — he’s going to be throwing a web at her. Harris is going to be throwing one at Biden.”