Impossible to Ignore: Even Colbert Questions Biden's Fitness for Office After Latest Bizarre Gaffe
When CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert is implying that President Joe Biden is mentally out to lunch, it might be time for the Democrats to pack it in.
Colbert, after all, is a man who got his job after mocking right-wingers by playing a fake one on Comedy Central. He’s arguably the most left-wing late-night network talk show host, an impressive feat when you consider his cohort includes Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers.
However, Monday’s late-night programs were the first since Easter Sunday — and since the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Which is usually not a great time for the president, as past years have borne out.
Consider 2022, when the “Easter Bunny” — actually White House director of message planning Meghan Hays — came over to guide Biden away after he started some off-message mumbling or wandered off to talk to kids:
Biden was incoherently mumbling about Afghanistan… so now we know why the Bunny ran over to interrupt… https://t.co/FthqFIgvHQ
— Abigail Marone 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) April 18, 2022
The Easter bunny retrieves Joe Biden after he wanders off to talk to some children pic.twitter.com/Wrd5L8p68B
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) April 18, 2022
.@POTUS @FLOTUS SURPRISE! pic.twitter.com/tE1dvRYkj6
— Meghan Hays (@MegHays46) April 18, 2022
Yeah, so while Joe may be a “devout Catholic,” Easter isn’t exactly his best holiday.
This repeated itself in 2023, when “beloved holiday character Al Roker” — Colbert’s words, proving he can occasionally make a joke — asked Biden whether he’d be running for president in 2024.
Uh-oh.
“Well, I’ll either, I’ll eith — I’ll either be rolling the egg or, uh, being the, the guy — you know, the guy who’s pushing them out,” the president said.
This morning on TODAY, President Biden told @alroker during a quick chat at the annual White House Easter egg roll that he plans on running for reelection in 2024: “I plan on running Al, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet.” https://t.co/Kcpzo0XPPP pic.twitter.com/Q31SFpDoqs
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 10, 2023
After that gaffe, he said he was going to be running but was “not prepared to announce it yet.” Which, um. Joe, you realize this is on TV, right?
“I plan on at least three or four more Easter Egg Rolls,” Biden continued, according to the New York Post. “Maybe five. Maybe six, what the hell? I don’t know.”
Even Colbert thought this was preposterous — and he donned those trademark Biden aviator sunglasses to lend it some more comedic value.
“That’s right, Jack! I got big Easter news — Joe Biden can lay eggs,” Colbert-as-Biden said.
“Easy as pie. No, I push ’em right out the cloaca, OK? Serve ’em up scrambled, or sit on ’em for a while, raise a beautiful flock of little baby Joes, ‘peep, peep, peep.’
“Point is, I am mentally fit to once again run for president of the United States. What’s goin’ on? Where’s Jill? Marco! Jill-o!”
The apocryphal story is that, when then-President Lyndon Johnson saw “CBS Evening News” anchor Walter Cronkite’s anti-Vietnam War editorial on Feb. 27, 1968, he said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Now, this story, as much as it ties a neat bow on when the tide of the war in Southeast Asia really changed, is just that: apocryphal, and likely myth.
“It is one of the great stories American journalism tells about itself, a moment when the power of television was trained on foreign policy to make a difference in an unpopular and faraway war,” the University of California Press notes.
However, I’d like to think that, like LBJ, Joe Biden was tuned to CBS at the White House on Monday night. And, in a brief moment of clarity, he said to himself: “If I’ve lost Colbert, I’ve lost it. Period.”
And then he looked for the Easter Bunny to lead him in the general direction of the kitchen so he could make himself a late-night sandwich — or maybe some fresh-laid scrambled eggs, straight from the prez.
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