OPINION:
The modern media trend is to make fun of President Trump for his alleged and actual misstatements of fact. You have to go a long way — in this case Sky News in Australia — to find a media outlet willing to make fun of a U.S. liberal Democrat.
The host of a program called “Outsiders,” Rita Panahi, assembled a montage of gaffes and gibberish from former Vice President and Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
The Biden montage makes you ask: Is this guy mentally fit to be president?
Biden supporters might argue the clips are edited, but what makes them formidable, credible — even incredible — is that they appear to reflect Mr. Biden’s speech and thought patterns over many years.
Here are some samples, beginning with his reference to “Super Thursday” (instead of Super Tuesday). Next comes this misstatement during a presidential debate: “150 million people have been killed since 2007 when Bernie (Sanders) voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability.”
If that were true, it would certainly “reduce the surplus population,” to quote Dickens’ Scrooge.
How about this beauty? “It would put 720 million women back in the work force.” Our country’s population currently stands at just under 330 million. Who’s doing Mr. Biden’s math?
There’s more.
“Nobody should be in jail for nonviolent crime.” That would clearly reduce the prison population, but it would likely increase the number of nonviolent crimes. Maybe Mr. Biden’s thinking the nonviolent offenders would be so grateful for being sprung he could earn their votes? Bernie Sanders one-ups Mr. Biden on that one. Mr. Sanders thinks even incarcerated violent offenders should be permitted to vote.
Mr. Biden recently announced he was a candidate “for the United States Senate.” He called the state of Vermont “a neat town.” “Make sure you have a record player on at night,” he advised an audience and “Poor kids are just as talented as white kids.” A Republican who said that would be called a racist.
“We choose truth over facts,” said Mr. Biden. He botched a line from the Declaration of Independence, saying, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; all men and women created by, you know the thing.”
The “thing” to which Thomas Jefferson was referring was God, but Democrats once booed God at their political convention, so apparently mention of the creator’s name is taboo among the secular progressives in the Democratic Party.
Ms. Panahi asserted that Mr. Biden has gotten as far as he has because the U.S. media largely covers for him. She then plays the most hilarious and outrageous sound bite of all.
Mr. Biden appears to be speaking to a group of African-American young people who are standing behind him at a swimming pool. Attempting to ingratiate himself with them (though they look bewildered), Mr. Biden talks about swimming in a pool when he was their age: “I got hairy legs that that that turns blonde in the sun and the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it would change and then watch the hair come back up again. I learned about roaches. I learned about kids jumping on my lap and I loved kids jumping on my lap.”
He goes on about somebody named “corn pop” who he said “was a bad dude and he ran with a bunch of bad boys. And I did and back in those days to show you how things have changed if you used pomade in your hair you had to use a bathing cap.”
Ms. Panahi ended her story by saying, “Can you imagine that man in a presidential debate with Donald Trump? There isn’t enough popcorn in the world.”
Grab some popcorn and watch it all.
• Cal Thomas, a nationally syndicated columnist, is the author of “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires, Superpowers and the United States” (HarperCollins/Zondervan, January 2020).
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