President Joe Biden has added to our lexicon in some colorful ways.
He taught us the phrase “dog-faced pony soldier.” He creatively summarized the Declaration of Independence. He even resurrected an archaic term with the use of “malarkey.”
And now he’ll teach us another word as we try to make sense of what happened during the White House naturalization ceremony on Friday: paraphasia.
Paraphasia isn’t one of Biden’s words, but it is the technical term for the word salad that so often falls out of his mouth and sounds suspiciously like the way people with dementia string together real words in nonsensical ways.
But since I’m not a trained physician, I’ll let you decide for yourself if that’s what’s happening in this clip that conservative commentator Benny Johnson jokingly called “an inspiring message for newly sworn citizens.”
Biden has an inspiring message for newly sworn citizens: pic.twitter.com/LvJ9WOsl1g
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 2, 2021
“Appreciate it for joining us in this service,” Biden said as he addressed the newly minted U.S. citizens.
“Look, today — uh, um — today’s special guest, uh, to all of you is my honor to congratulate the 21 of you who for have earned the title of that our democracy in every is equal to being president is of the same consequence,” he told them.
“Citizen,” he said, finally landing on the appropriate concept. “Citizen of the United States of America.”
Though this was a momentary lapse and one that he recovered from to power through — albeit with all the vigor of a tired grandpa trying to make it through the fifth reading of “Goodnight Moon” to his grandkids — it’s part of a troubling pattern.
The left has tried to explain away such lapses as being related to Biden’s childhood stutter, but these embarrassing episodes don’t seem to have any relationship to that kind of speech impediment — and they are becoming too frequent to ignore.
Throughout the campaign, many worried about the 78-year-old’s cognitive abilities, though he could safely avoid the spotlight by calling a lid on his day before most folks his age were bellying up to the early-bird special at the buffet.
But now that he’s president, Biden can’t hide in his basement and can’t take refuge in the bosom of a complicit establishment — the troubling signs of dementia are on display for the world to see.
Men his age make blunders like this, and families would never ridicule an older relative for messing up so royally — but Biden’s not our grandpa, he’s our president.
Understand that I take no pleasure in pointing out these problems he’s having — God knows we’ll all get there someday if we live long enough — but the leader of the free world can’t go shuffling around confused and talking gibberish every day without grave consequences.
The problem becomes that unlike those of his predecessors, Biden’s speeches can’t possibly instill confidence in our allies or strike fear into the hearts of our enemies when he’s only making word salad.
So while it’s enlightening to be learning some new words during the Biden administration, these repeated mistakes are gravely undermining our country.
The truth is that the more this man speaks in public, the more the world is laughing at Biden — and at us.
