Explaining Biden’s State of the Union Stumbles

Playbook: “Finally, you could not have watched Biden’s speech without noticing an unusual number of verbal miscues. Sometimes, they happened when he had trouble reading his teleprompter. Other times, they came when he added something that wasn’t in his prepared remarks.”

“We’ve seen various explanations for this. It’s a staple of the Breitbart-Fox-MAGA media complex to suggest, without evidence, that the mistakes are a result of ‘cognitive decline.’ On the other hand, Atlantic writer John Hendrickson argues that some of Biden’s verbal bobbles are an artifact of his childhood stutter — an idea that Biden rejected in a 2020 interview with Hendrickson, but later, during a CNN town hall, suggested was a possibility ‘when I find myself really tired.’ Either way, there were some odd moments Tuesday night.”