Joe Biden did not have a good talking day on Wednesday, even by Joe Biden standards, which are already a low bar.
It was a banner day for bad remarks from Biden in Israel and on his way back to the U.S.
First, when he met for a photo op with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden blanked out as he was trying to tell him a story. Then Biden also said it appeared it was "done by the other team" to Netanyahu, as though the war were a football game. But he also didn't name the "other team" -- Hamas -- in this incident.
Even those brief comments were read from notes, and yet he still stumbled over them anyway. He made other remarks after he met with Netanyahu and got confused about the Six-Day War, saying he visited Israel before it in 1967 and met with the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. He didn't meet with her until 1973, before the Yom Kippur War. He also caused a lot of furor by saying he would be funneling $100 million in aid to Gaza and the West Bank. That concerns many who believe based on history that it could promptly be hijacked by Hamas.
Then Biden gave an impromptu presser on Air Force One as he returned to the United States, where he looked very old and seemed to have great trouble communicating what he was trying to say. He did manage to be a bit snotty to a reporter who asked if his very brief trip made any sense, and he said, "What do you think?"
But one of the things he said deserves some more comment, namely his remarks about the explosion at the hospital likely being from a misfired rocket from Hamas.
“I’m not suggesting that Hamas deliberately did it,” the president said at Ramstein Air Base in Germany en route back to Washington after visiting Israel earlier in the day.
“It’s that old thing: Gotta learn how to shoot straight,” Biden went on.
“It’s not the first time that Hamas has launched something that didn’t function very well.”
Does he have any idea how that sounds? It's like he's saying they have to learn how to shoot the Israelis better. That did not go over well. Joking about terrorists never does.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken's face behind Biden is something else, as he seems to be praying that Biden shuts up.
That was bad enough. But there was one other question that many had about Biden in this clip. Just what was going on with his chin?
You can see it again here.
Now maybe that's lighting, angle, or something else. The speculation went a little viral. But it certainly is weird, on an already very weird Biden day.