President Joe Biden appeared to slur his words once again as he delivered remarks at a campaign rally on Wednesday.
Biden’s string of errors in a speech at the Pieper-Hillside Boys and Girls Club in Milwaukee marks the latest in a litany of vocal gaffes for the Commander-in-Chief, and has contributed further to concerns over his “mental acuity” ahead of this year’s election.
He said: “Look, the communities everywhere at this Boys and Girls Club… I've been a gigantic supporter of Boys and… biggest in the country, but when I was a senator I provided a lot of money when… during the crime sprees going on… for Boys and Girls Club.”
Despite the slow start, Biden went on to announce a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investment scheme “to help right historic wrongs” in 40 US states.
Biden was speaking at Pieper-Hillside Boys and Girls Club in Milwaukee when he made the errors
Reuters
He said the funding package, backed by bipartisan infrastructure laws and the Inflation Reduction Act, would help bring back isolated communities back into the fold by improving neglected highways and roads.
The president’s visit to Wisconsin forms part of a push for votes from black, Latin and suburban residents – which he’ll need to keep on side in order to fight to keep the state blue after flipping it away from Trump in 2020.
Biden acknowledged the importance of the battleground state – pledging to “get down to knocking on doors” with an “awful lot at stake” in the election.
His visit to the Boys and Girls Club is one stop on his tour of strategically important states, and comes a day after he secured the Democratic nomination – setting up a rematch against Donald Trump.
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Trump has made plenty of digs at Biden's speech in the past
ReutersAnd he took aim at his predecessor in his address, attacking Trump’s “campaign of resentment, revenge, and retribution that threatens the very idea of America”.
But his starting stutter – a problem from which he has suffered since childhood, but one which appears to have ramped up in recent months – will only serve as more ammunition for his electoral opponent.
He’s confused French presidents, German chancellors, and mixed up Egypt and Mexico – all in 2024.
Trump mocked Biden for his impediment at a Georgia rally earlier this week, even doing an impression of the incumbent, saying: “I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together”.
While in January, the former president said: “Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing. He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy – ‘he’s a threat to d-d-democracy’. Couldn’t read the word.”
But Biden has tried to own his stutter – even offering support to a young boy with the same problem, telling him it “took a lot of practice, but I promise you, I promise you, you can do it”.
However, opponents have slammed the Potus for his mumbling – not least when he misspoke at his State of the Union address last week, in which he referred to murdered nursing student Laken Riley as “Lincoln Riley”.
But Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has dismissed reports – including a Department of Justice report – that Biden’s cognitive ability was not up to task, labelling it “right-wing propaganda”.