Dr. Jill Biden was having none of it. CNN’s Jake Tapper was trying to ask about her husband’s “occasional gaffe” in a pre-debate interview when she cut him off. “Oh, you can’t even go there,” she said. “After Donald Trump, you cannot even say the word gaffe.”
“I can’t even say the word gaffe?” Mr. Tapper replied.
“Nope. Done. It’s gone,” Dr. Biden pushed back.
Mr. Tapper moved on. But for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his penchant to misspeak or utter an inopportune or politically incorrect phrase will be under particular scrutiny at Tuesday night’s debate, and he faces a Republican opponent in President Trump who has primed an entire conservative media ecosystem to amplify any missteps.
But the Trump campaign is gearing up to amplify any Biden gaffes. He has made a few during the election cycle, like when Mr. Biden said that any Black voter having hard time deciding between him and Mr. Trump “ain’t Black.” That got a lot of attention in the mainstream media, too. But on Fox News and other conservative outlets, what would otherwise be fleeting moments like Mr. Biden not delivering the Pledge of Allegiance in full have been promoted as signs of cognitive decline.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, accused Mr. Biden of having “dementia” on Fox News, even as he himself mangled what he was accusing Mr. Biden of misspeaking about: “He can’t do the prologue to the, to the, to, ya, to the Constitution of the United States, or the Declaration of Independence. Any of them.”
Multiple conspiracy theories have been promoted ahead of the debate to offset a potentially strong showing by Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has demanded that Mr. Biden undergo testing for performance-enhancing drugs, and Fox News anchors on Tuesday floated, without evidence, the notion of hidden listening devices for Mr. Biden. “We’re going to have to follow that through the day,” Fox’s Bret Baier said. Chris Wallace of Fox News is serving as the debate moderator.
It is true that Mr. Biden misspeaks and meanders, perhaps never as memorably as he did when a question about the legacy of slavery during a Democratic debate last year wound back around to record players.
Mr. Biden even once called himself a “gaffe machine.” But he said that was better than the incumbent alternative: “My God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth.”
September 30, 2020 at 01:00AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/team-biden-forget-about-the-gaffes-and-focus-on-falsehoods.html
Team Biden: Forget about the gaffes and focus on falsehoods. - The New York Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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