Americans Horrified After Seeing How Biden Looked at Beach: 'Fitting Snapshot of an America in Decline'
He’s the world’s most pallorful man.
President Joe Biden took to the beach for a family outing in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Saturday in full view of watching cameras, mincing across unsteady sand, fidgeting with an uncooperative beach chair, and in general letting the world have a look at how an 80-year-old man in lackluster physical health comes across in a summertime environment.
It’s a beach body picture the American body politic could do without — for Biden’s sake, and the sake of the country.
Conservative commentator Benny Johnson probably spoke for many Biden critics in a Twitter post calling the images a “snapshot of an America in Decline.”
Pale, shriveled, shirtless Joe Biden fumbling around on the beach before being escorted back to the nursing home is a fitting snapshot of an America in Decline.
We are judged by the strength and fitness of our leaders.
What does this say the world?pic.twitter.com/McyHdt4X6k
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 8, 2023
“Pale, shriveled, shirtless Joe Biden fumbling around on the beach before being escorted back to the nursing home is a fitting snapshot of an America in Decline,” Johnson wrote in a tweet published Saturday.
“We are judged by the strength and fitness of our leaders.
“What does this say the world?”
Well, for starters, if the United States is going to be judged by the fitness of its current president, the verdict is already guilty — guilty of historic fecklessness in putting an obviously inept man in one of the most demanding positions on earth; guilty of criminal partisanship in accepting Biden as a suitable candidate for the job in the first place, because literally no one else in his Democratic Party was presidential material in 2020 (and isn’t now); guilty of the willful blindness that comes with accepting a version of reality promoted by a viciously biased establishment media that no longer even pretends to be politically neutral.
But there’s not an American citizen who’s been paying attention since April of 2019, when Biden announced his presidential candidacy, who didn’t know that before Biden’s beach trip started appearing on social media.
Johnson compared the apparent apathy of Biden’s fellow beachgoers — the party of the president, first lady Jill Biden and granddaughter Finnegan appeared all but ignored in the videos, the U.K. Daily Mail reported — with the raucous greeting former President Donald Trump received Saturday night at the T-Mobile arena in Las Vegas where he showed up to watch mixed-martial-arts fighting.
Joe Biden goes to the beach in his home state and no one even cares
Seriously, not a single person even stopped to say “hello.”
Meanwhile, Trump is welcomed like a conquering hero by 50K roaring fans a thousand miles from his home
Who is the President?pic.twitter.com/giEFg0pzyl
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 9, 2023
One difference between the two men, and the two appearances, is that the principal figure is fully dressed — a concession to propriety and decorum that clearly doesn’t constrain a career narcissist like Biden, who’s likely entering the second childhood of senescence anyway.
It’s not hard to imagine what Trump might look like parading around in a pair of bathing trunks with no shirt on — probably as flaccidly pale as most other large-framed, 77-year-old men with the blood of the British Isles running through their veins.
It’s not Biden’s fault he’s pale — Irish Americans don’t tan easily. But it is Biden’s fault that he doesn’t care that he’s not just making himself look weak, he’s making his country look weak, too. He’s been doing that by his actions since Jan. 20, 2021. He didn’t need to do this, too.
In other words, while there’s nothing intrinsically horrifying about an 80-year-old man having an 80-year-old man’s physique, it is horrifying that that man who is the president of the country has so little regard for the image of his office that he makes it so public.
The social media response was almost uniformly negative.
He should not be allowed to do this -_-
— Reaching Higher (@excited_gerbil) July 9, 2023
This is way too much of this man I want to see
— RWBWildcat (@sweettrinity) July 8, 2023
Did anyone notice the throngs of excited people with cell phone cameras, trying to get as close as possible to capture a historic moment in their lives?
Me neither.
— Slotyp_ist (@Slotyp_ist) July 9, 2023
The fact is, what Biden did was both selfish and incredibly crass (he should have learned about having class when he was back in Scranton). Americans are unlikely to see Trump sporting on the beach with Melania while he remains interested in the realm of politics — because as a matter of respecting the office of the presidency, it simply shouldn’t be done.
(That’s not at all to say the country wouldn’t get a little cheering-up from an image or two of Melania sporting some tastefully suitable beachwear, just that it’s a regrettably good bet that it isn’t going to happen.)
In addition to the proprieties, images like this just advertise how much time Biden has spent vacationing while supposedly leading the Republic. According to RNC Research, the beach trip marked Biden’s 353rd day of vacation since taking office — 39.2 percent of his presidency (see if your boss will be so forgiving).
Politics is optics, and the optics of Biden pussyfooting around on a beach half-naked are not good optics for a man who — unfortunately — represents the country on the world stage.
Biden has already demonstrated too many times by accident how unfit he is to hold the office. His incessant mental lapses veer from regrettable, to concerning to infuriating (while the nation’s enemies abroad lick their teeth). His physical health and coordination are unquestionably deteriorating — whether it’s falling up a set of stairs repeatedly, being tripped by a sandbag or falling off a bike.
The unforced error of allowing the doddering president to be recorded in a beach scene is the kind of unforced error only arrogance induces. (Then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie parking his considerable girth on a public beach that he’d closed to the Garden State public over a state budget crisis in 2017 was the same sort of arrogance, but to Christie’s somewhat credit, it’s unlikely he planned to be photographed doing it.)
This post might have put it perfectly:
Decline is a choice pic.twitter.com/bECosyNqGH
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 8, 2023
Of course, Biden has little choice over his own physical decline — the reality of the human body doesn’t change just because his party pretends it does.
But the United States has a choice whether to continue to accept the decline Biden and his benighted party’s policies are forcing on the country.
And in 2024, that choice needs to be a resounding, unmistakable “no.”
Back home as a private citizen, Joe will be able to stumble around on the beach all he wants.
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