In what can only be assumed is an effort to cut down on gaffes, both the White House and the Biden-Harris reelection campaign have taken to releasing pre-recorded videos of President Joe Biden speaking on various topics.
The only problem? It’s abundantly clear these clips require quite a bit of editing, which may be undermining the mission.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke to discuss the latest overproduced video from the Biden team and what it says about the president’s re-election chances.
Edit Out
Late Tuesday, Biden’s official @POTUS account on X posted a two-minute video of the commander in chief defending NATO and other U.S. alliances while demanding lawmakers pass legislation to send more aid to Ukraine. But it is not the content of the speech that is making headlines.
There are more than two-dozen jump cuts in the heavily edited video, suggesting many takes were required to get the finished product. “What’s interesting about the video is that it’s two-minutes long, and there are roughly 30 edits,” Megyn noted.
Cooke called the display “sad” and hard to watch. “That reminds me of the fake outtakes at the end of Talladega Nights, where they can’t they can’t get through two or three seconds without laughing, so it’s all edited in a weird way,” he said. “It’s sad.”
A scroll through Biden’s personal and presidential social media accounts reveals countless examples of similar clips released in the last couple of months. Perhaps none was more egregious than the 12-second campaign video posted in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s historic 30-point win in the Iowa Caucus in January.
It featured an obvious edit halfway through, which Megyn called “terrifying” at the time. “That jump cut… was obviously there for a reason,” she said. “He screwed it up. He couldn’t get through it.”
Campaign Problems
In many ways, Megyn said these videos feel like a last resort. “We’re going to see him at the State of the Union and will find out whether he can just read off the teleprompter, but he can’t do live events, he can’t do, like, a Trump rally, he certainly couldn’t do a live debate,” Megyn explained. “So, they’ve been putting out these little prepackaged videos of him.”
While the Democratic Party and media may, in Cooke’s words, believe they can “bully people out of noticing” Biden’s decline, polling suggests otherwise. “The last number I saw was 86 percent of Americans think that Biden is too old to be president,” he said. “The reason 86 percent of Americans – including a majority of Democrats – think that is because it’s transparently obvious when you watch the man.”
Since highlighting Trump’s legal battles has not proven to be an effective strategy, the Biden campaign is pivoting to calling out the GOP frontrunner’s rhetoric. “We have an election now where we have Joe Biden’s team promising that they’re going to keep calling out the crazy from Team Trump,” Megyn said. “That’s their plan for the next year.”
Given Biden’s issues with memory and oration, it remains to be seen how that will be received. “So, we’ve got somebody who is going to try to say, ‘I know I’m old, but I don’t say really crazy stuff about NATO and so on,'” she concluded. “I mean, we’ll see how the American public responds to that.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Cooke by tuning in to episode 728 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.