President Biden on Thursday inadvertently held up a comically detailed cheat sheet prepared by his staff instructing the gaffe-prone leader of the free world to “take YOUR seat” and to limit his remarks to “2 minutes.”
A photographer snapped an image of the document when Biden held it up backward at a meeting with wind-industry executives, which he attended after skipping his administration’s morning meeting with oil companies about combatting record gas prices.
The prepared instructions for Biden — titled “Offshore Wind Drop-By Sequence of Events” — tell Biden to “enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants.”
Then, the paper says, “YOU take YOUR seat.”
The typed-up note says that after reporters arrive, “YOU give brief comments (2 minutes).”
When reporters depart, “YOU ask Liz Shuler, President, AFL-CIO, a question” and then “YOU thank participants” and “YOU depart.”
Biden’s use of staff notes at events has been embarrassing before, such as last July, when an aide scrawled, “Sir, there is something on your chin.” Biden also held that note so it faced reporters and photographers.
Biden reportedly has bristled at staff attempting to control his message to the point that they even contradict his unexpected public utterances without checking with him.
Biden reportedly reminded staff that he’s president after they said he didn’t mean what he said in March when he called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be removed from power over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The so-called clean-up campaign, he has told advisers, undermines him and smothers the authenticity that fueled his rise. Worse, it feeds a Republican talking point that he’s not fully in command,” NBC News reported last month.
A day after Biden’s remark about Putin, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted a message from CNN White House correspondent John Harwood that said Biden’s remark showed a “significant lapse in discipline.”
Republicans often accuse the 79-year-old president of being in mental decline. Former President Donald Trump claimed ahead of the 2020 election that Biden was cognitively “shot.”
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