All eyes were on President Joe Biden at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, though few came for the jokes. (This is good, considering how few he actually cracked.) The question is far beyond whether his cognitive abilities have declined — all honest assessors understand he’s slowed dramatically just since he was vice president — but on how he presents. Could he cut and jab like he did at the State of the Union? Or would he mumble into the microphone, mixing up continents and dishing the latest on long-dead leaders?
Mind you: Very little of the glitzy annual D.C. party weekend is concerned with reality. It’s performance, just as this whole White House has been.
The president’s January State of the Union successfully quieted the growing chorus of professional Democrats calling for a new candidate, and this weekend the White House hoped to reinforce that win in front of the courtiers (which is exactly what the people in the room are).
He toasted them, they toasted him, and he slurred on, garnering the kind of forced laughs an elderly relative might get from polite grandkids.
The reporters and their celebrity guests applauded themselves when the president lauded their bravery. "You literally risk your lives doing your job,” he assured the champagne-drunk crowd.
The crowd tensed up when Biden instructed them to “rise up to the seriousness of the moment,” however. It’s all well and fine that the American corporate media effectively ran Biden’s election campaign and will have to run his re-election effort, but you’re not supposed to talk about it out loud.
Outside, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protesters let the D.C. elites know their kind of liberalism isn’t nearly enough, hurling curses and tossing fake blood onto bedazzled attendees who had to wade through the crowds to get inside.
Violent radical protests have been a left-wing election constant since 2016 but weren’t a concern to the Democrats ... Subscribe to Christopher Bedford's newsletter and get today's issue sent to your inbox.
