Biden Caught Using New Cheat Sheet Featuring Photos of Friendly Reporters to Call On
19:05 GMT 27.10.2023 (Updated: 19:09 GMT 27.10.2023)
© AFP 2023 / JIM WATSON
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The president’s habit of relying on custom-tailored notecard-based reminders helping him put a face to a name or even perform a basic political engagement has ramped up concerns over his mental state, with polls showing that a growing number of Americans are becoming concerned over his ability to serve.
The days of White House reporters engaging in actual journalism by asking the president tough, unexpected questions appear to be a thing of the past, with Joe Biden spotted with a cheat sheet featuring the names and photos of reporters to call upon.
The naughty notecard, spotted by eagle-eyed internet users who watched Biden’s Wednesday press conference at the White House alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, appears to show four names and photos Biden was meant to tap for questions.
Biden dutifully followed through, with all four names in the list, including White House correspondent Joey Garrison, PBS’s Laura Barron-Lopez, The Australian reporter Jeff Chambers and Australian Channel 10 politics editor Ashleigh Raper getting called upon to ask their questions, with the rest resigned to the role of glorified stenographers.
US President Joe Biden and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (behind) leave after a joint press conference at the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 25, 2023. Paper shows names and photos of journalists Biden would ultimately end up calling on.
© AFP 2023 / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
Garrison asked Biden about whether Americans should “be worried” about the escalating conflict in the Middle East, including the danger of direct clashes with Iran. Exchanging some convivial back and forth banter, the president responded about the US having troops in the region since 9/11 “to go after ISIS and prevent its reasser – reemergence – in both – anyway, in the region – having nothing to do with Israel at all.” (Note: ISIS/Daesh actually formed in 2013, ten years after the US invasion of Iraq, and twelve years after the US declared its ‘Global War on Terror’).
Barron-Lopez, for her part, asked Biden whether he believed newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson would try to “overturn” the results of the 2024 election, to which Biden confidently answered “No.” The journalist followed up with a question about the mounting number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza amid the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, to which Biden responded that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
Chambers asked Biden about tensions between the US and China in the South China Sea, alleged human rights abuses and intellectual property theft. Biden responded that he’s taking a “Trust but verify” approach to Beijing, and repeated his oft-used line about having “met with Xi Jinping more than any other world leader.” Handed a softball question about whether the US would be “the more reliable partner” to other nations than China, Biden at first appeared not to understand the question, and then responded by saying he hopes that yes, the US would be “a reliable partner when we act.”
Finally, taking praise from Raper for AUKUS, who characterized the security pact “in many ways [as Biden’s] creation,” and asked whether the president could provide a “personal guarantee” of getting the necessary legislation through Congress to future-proof the alliance before the 2024 elections, Biden responded that he couldn’t offer such a guarantee, but that he would “try,” and repeating another talking point about how the alliance definitely isn’t an anti-China pact.
The cheat sheet is far from the first time that Biden has been caught using such notecards – whether to help orient him on which journalists to call on during press conferences, or even offer basic information like the names of members of his cabinet, and occasionally something as small as entering a room and remembering to say “hello” to participants of an event.
Biden isn’t the first president to use cheat sheets, with former President Donald Trump caught several times with notes he appeared to have written himself using a large felt tip pen. But the extent of Biden’s use of the notecards, combined with some of their content, have served to fuel rumors of his mental decline, with Trump warning repeatedly in recent months that “Sleepy Joe’s” “cognitive impairment” threatens to sleepwalk the United States into “World War III.”
A poll in June indicated that some 68 percent of American voters have doubts about Biden's mental and physical health.
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