Joe Biden delivers his first speech as president at annual white-tie gala
Washington:
US President Joe Biden joked about Donald Trump and his own age at his annual media dinner on Saturday before issuing extremely harsh criticism of his opponent in the November election.
“One candidate is too old and mentally unfit to be president,” the 81-year-old Democrat quipped at Washington’s Gridiron Club. “The other one is me.”
Democrat Joe Biden delivered his first presidential address at the annual white-tie gala for America’s media and political elite, an event where Republican former President Donald Trump spoke in 2018.
Biden, who trails in multiple polls and faces concerns among voters about his age, has tried to address the 77-year-old Trump’s recent verbal gaffes.
In his speech, Biden lashed out at Republicans in Congress who have launched an impeachment inquiry into his son’s business dealings, saying they would “rather fail on impeachment than succeed on anything else.”
He added that Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar “looked at Parliament and he asked for another Guinness” when he sat at the head table with Biden on St. Patrick’s Day.
Varadkar and Biden both urged congressional Republicans at a meeting at the White House on Friday to stop blocking military aid to Ukraine to counter Russia’s incursion.
But Biden then returned to Trump, saying the Democratic campaign would show how they could rebuild the US economy after the Covid-19 pandemic “without encouraging the American people to inject bleach”.
He was referring to an incident in which Trump, as president, asked a top medical adviser whether virus victims could be cured by injecting them with disinfectant.
Biden added: “Listen, I wish these were jokes, but they’re not.”
“Democracy and freedom are really under attack. Putin is making inroads in Europe. My predecessor bowed to him and said, ‘Do what you want.'”
Noting that Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Karas, a strong critic of Russia, was also at his table, he added, “We will not bow down, they will not bow down, and I will not bow down.”
Biden added that Trump’s false claims to have won the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021, showed that “poison flows through the veins of our democracy.”
He also backed journalists whom Trump has repeatedly attacked, adding: “You are not the enemy of the people. You are the backbone of any free society.”
Trump did engage in an unusually funny dig at the Washington press corps during an appearance at the Gridiron Club six years ago, joking about North Korea and his own leadership style.
The gridiron dinner was held behind closed doors, with no photography allowed, and Washington’s elite relaxed during an evening of self-deprecating humor that included members in costume performing a song.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
