After fumbling for 13 seconds to collect his thoughts, and struggling desperately to finish answering a reporter’s question, Pres. Joe Biden declared it was time for him to go to bed – but, stayed to take another question, prompting Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre to cut him off in mid-sentence after he confuses two parts of the world.
Speaking in Hanoi on Sunday, Pres. Biden had just finished smearing people who refute his climate-doom ideology as “lying, dog-faced pony soldiers,” when he became confused for 13 seconds as he tried to figure out what his next “orders” were. Finally, his staff told him what to do next:
Pres. Biden: “Well, there’s a lot of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers out there about — about global warming, but not anymore. All of a sudden, they’re all realizing it’s a problem. And there’s nothing like seeing the light.
“For — and let’s see…I’m just following my orders here.
“Uh…
“Staff, is there anybody I haven’t spoken to?
(Cross-talk.)
“No, I ain’t calling on you. I’m calling on — I said there were five questions.
Karine Jean-Pierre: “Anita — Anita from VOA.”
Pres. Biden: “Anita from VOA.”
Biden then appeared to become exhausted and gasped to get words out as he fought to finish a sentence about U.S.-China relations, after which he told his audience that he needed to go to bed:
“I just think that there are other things on leaders’ minds, and they respond to what’s needed at the time.
“And look, nobody…likes….having…celebrated…international meetings if you don’t know what you want…at the meeting, if you don’t have a gameplan. He may have a gameplan; he just hasn’t shared it with me.
“But I tell you what: I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”
But, Biden didn’t go to bed. Instead, he stayed and began to answer another question.
After the president confused the “Third World” with the “Southern Hemisphere,” his press secretary cut him off and called an end to the event as exit-music swelled:
Pres. Biden: “We talked about what we talked about at the conference overall. We talked about stability. We talked about making sure that the Third World — the — excuse me — ‘Third World’ — the — the — the Southern Hemisphere had access to change, it had access —
“We — it wasn’t confrontational at all. He came up to me. He said (cut off)
Jean-Pierre: “Thank — thank you, everybody. This ends the press conference. Thank you.”
Ironically, while Biden’s talk began at 9 p.m. Indonesia Time (ICT), he was actually speaking before noon U.S. Eastern Time.