President Joe Biden is doing his best to hold himself together during his multi-day swing across Ireland, but his best has just not been good enough. As Townhall reported earlier during the president's foreign trip, Biden confused the New Zealand "All Blacks" rugby team with the "Black and Tan" who were officers fighting in the Irish War of Independence. Not great.
But now, an official transcript from the White House — a masterful piece of work by the stenographers — shows again just how coming-apart-at-the-seams Biden is when he's caught without a teleprompter or prepared remarks. When Biden met with embassy families and firefighters in Dublin — joined by his son Hunter Biden — the president was asked by one child in the crowd about his tips for success. It did not go well.
Here's what the White House released:
MR. HUNTER BIDEN: In the back. He’s got a question.
THE PRESIDENT: What’s your question?
CHILD: What’s the top step to success?
THE PRESIDENT: What’s the top what?
CHILD: Step — steps — step to success.
THE PRESIDENT: What’s the top step to succ- — to success?
CHILD: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, well, making sure that we don’t all have COVID. What — why — what are we talking about here?
CHILD: Like —
MR. HUNTER BIDEN: If you can — what’s the — what’s the key to success?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, what’s the key to success? You know what I found out is the key to success is? And I’m not sure I’m the best guy to explain it; these guys can tell you.
The key to success is whenever you disagree with someone, it’s okay to question their judgment — whether they’re right or wrong — but it’s never okay to question their motive. If you question their motive, then you never get to be able to agree.
For example, if you say to somebody, “The reason why you don’t agree with me is because you are stupid, you are bad, you are — you just don’t like the people I like.”
Instead of saying I just didn’t — just tell you why, I disagree with you because of the following things. Because once you question somebody’s motive — why they’re doing something — because you don’t know. In fact, what happens after that, you can never get an agreement, get together.
I learned that lesson a long time — I say to that to all the embassy folks, too — I learned that a long time ago.
This is, unfortunately, very real and not the work of satire writers. Thank goodness Hunter was along for the trip, otherwise that poor child might still be trying to get an answer to his question about success. But President Biden wasn't out of the woods yet with his longwinded answer.
The White House's transcript continues:
THE PRESIDENT: There was a guy named Jesse Helms from South Carolina — from North Carolina — South Carolina.
MR. HUNTER BIDEN: North.
THE PRESIDENT: — North Carolina. And he was a very conservative guy who was very, very — not very crazy about African Americans when he got here. He was all — we always had fights.
And one day, I was going into the United States Senate, and Jesse Helms said — was — was on the floor of the Senate saying some terrible things about Ted Kennedy and Bob Dole, the Republican leader, who both had introduced a bill for making sure people with disabilities have access to curb cuts, access to buses, and all these things. It’s called the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And what happened was, I was very upset when I walked in to go see the Majority Leader when I heard this debate. And unfortunately, I was more afraid of the Majority Leader being late than — than I was to go and talk.
I walked in, and I guess I looked like I was angry. And he looked at me, and he said, “What’s the matter, Joe?” I was 32 years old. And I said — and I went on about Jesse Helms, that he has no social redeeming value. “How could he possibly say things like that?” I couldn’t believe it.
And he looked at me and he said, “Joe, what would you say if I told you that Jesse Helms, in 1970, sitting in his living room with his wife, Dot, in Raleigh were reading the paper. And there was a photograph of a young man on crutches — 16 years old, with braces from under his arms all the way down to his ankles, and two steel crutches.” And I said, what would you — and — “It was an advertisement for an orphanage. And it said, ‘All I want is someone to take me home for Christmas and love me.’”
He said, “What would you say, Joe, if I told you they adopted that young man?” I said, “I’d feel foolish.” Well, they did adopt him. They did adopt him.
And I said — and I went and apologized to Jesse Helms, because the idea that I disagreed with everything he said, but when he — but the suggestion that he’s doing it because he didn’t care about people with disabilities was wrong. I questioned his motive. I never did that again.
That’s a long answer to a real quick question. (Laughter.)
Yes.
Oh boy. I'm sure the child who asked the question is now crystal-clear about what it takes to be successful, though potentially confused about the difference between North and South Carolina.
The end of Biden's Q&A didn't go any better, either, with Hunter again being needed to help the president figure out what he's supposed to do and act as his handler:
THE PRESIDENT: Anyway, guys —
MR. HUNTER BIDEN: You’re supposed to do the rope line, Dad.
THE PRESIDENT: I’m supposed to do the rope line?
MR. HUNTER BIDEN: Just to say hi to everybody. (Inaudible.)
THE PRESIDENT: All right. Well, guys, thank you.
The image given by the White House's own transcript is that Hunter Biden is basically in charge of the president's foreign trip, which — given the contents of his laptop from hell — is a scary thought. It just goes to show, yet again, that it doesn't matter what you do if you're close enough to powerful Democrats. You can be a drug-addicted, under federal investigation liability and still travel the world aboard Air Force One and act as puppeteer for the supposed leader of the free world.
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