Biden Confidently Places Hand on Heart, Then Slowly Lowers It After Realizing What's Being Played
Hey, Joe, they weren’t playing our song!
Even when reasonable Americans think President Joe Biden can’t go any further in embarrassing the country on the world stage, he finds a way to outdo himself again.
But Thursday’s Biden blunder — on the South Lawn of the White House, in front of a visiting head of state, the international news media and United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps — might be tough to top anytime soon.
While hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Biden mistook the opening strains of the Indian national anthem for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” placing his right hand over his heart with a practiced confidence, before a crestfallen came over his face as the music continued.
Eventually, Biden realized that the band wasn’t playing his own country’s anthem at all, and the hand trailed back to his side.
Biden, alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, slowly lowers his hand from his heart after realizing they’re playing the Indian national anthem first pic.twitter.com/hcb0cpjFmN
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 22, 2023
Now, anybody can make a mistake, of course, but Biden had less excuse than most for this one, which we’ll get to in a moment. (And CBS News cameras has literally no excuse for covering for Biden the way they did, but we’ll get to that in a moment, too.)
What’s really noteworthy here is how long it took the president to realize that the band wasn’t playing the familiar tune of Francis Scott Key’s paean to Old Glory after all. “O say, can you see …” doesn’t sound a bit like that.
Not surprisingly, social media lit up with scathing commentary. As one Twitter user put it: “That was just plain painful to watch.”
That was just plain painful to watch.
— Noah W. Wilcox (@NWWilcox) June 22, 2023
Many agreed — and took it further:
This is beyond painful and shocking to watch. Now imagine how the rest of the world is viewing this.
— Liberacrat™️ (@Liberacrat) June 22, 2023
That was an awkward moment for an old man. Way to go on the world stage.
— Eddie, USN (Ret) (@eoverfelt) June 22, 2023
He is so unaware.
— Carole B. Smith (@smith_bahn) June 22, 2023
These two words probably summed it up best: “International embarrassment.”
International embarrassment.
— Chinwhisker (@chinwhisker) June 22, 2023
Of course, just about any other American patriotic adult, sports fan, or child above third grade would have probably figured it out sooner, but Biden had the advantage — or should have had the advantage — of knowing in advance which country’s anthem was going to be played first.
According to State Department protocol, it’s “standard practice” that when two countries’ anthems are played on the occasion of a state visit, it’s the visiting country’s that’s played first.
“In the United States, the national anthem of the foreign country should be played first, followed by the U.S. national anthem,” the protocol states.
At 80 and the oldest man ever to hold the office, Biden has been in the White House as president for more than two years. Before that, he was vice president for eight years, and before that, he was a senator who helped write the Articles of Confederation. (That’s a joke. Biden’s a good decade too young for that.)
In other words, he’s had more experience in state visits than most, and should have known damn well what national anthem was going to go first. The obvious fact is he didn’t. And the very strong possibility is that he simply is not aware enough of his surroundings that it never even crossed his mind.
That should frighten even Democrats who wet their beds at the idea that Donald Trump could return to office.
Meanwhile, naturally, the establishment media continued in its role as the Praetorian Guard of presidential PR.
Check out how CBS cut away from Biden at the crucially embarrassing moment when it was clear it wasn’t “The Star-Spangled Banner” the band was playing — at first showing Biden and Modi from behind, then going to a long distance shot where Biden’s hand can be seen moving back to his side. Once Biden’s hand was safely away from the saluting position, CBS returned to its original angle like nothing ever happened.
At about the 1:25 mark, the national anthem of Biden’s own country starts, and the president’s hand returns to his heart where it remains, thankfully, until the song is over — you can almost see his shoulders square with relief.
There’s a confusing mix of emotions to these increasingly common Biden disasters:
Rage at Biden himself that the doddering, almost certainly corrupt octagenarian had the arrogance to seek an office he never had any business holding even in his best years.
Fury that his family and handlers in the Democratic Party are so hungry for power that they’re willing to subject a clearly incapacitated man to public humiliation that it should constitute elder abuse, and have so little respect for either him or the country that they’re running him for re-election;
Disgust that a nation that enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment of its Constitution is being so disgracefully ill-served by the establishment media that serves as a propaganda generator for political purposes.
What it doesn’t engender is pride in a country that remains the greatest on earth.
That’s going to take the 2024 election, at the earliest. But it’s coming.
And when it does, Democrats and the establishment media are going to have to face the music.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
