We can add another sign to the list that President Joe Biden may be too old for the job, after Biden depended primarily on his notecards resting in his lap, while speaking to the Israeli President Issac Herzog in the Oval Office.
However, despite having his trusty notecards, Biden still struggled to pronounce the names of cities while speaking to Herzog.
Meanwhile, many left-wing Democrats lined up to boycott Herzog’s scheduled speech at the Capitol in protest of the Jewish state’s policies towards Palestinians.
“This is a friendship, I believe, that is just simply unbreakable…unbreakable,” said Biden, who read from notecards on his lap rather than looking Herzog in the face for much of his roughly one minute of public remarks before journalists were removed from the room.
“And together working to bring more security and integration to the Middle East. And a lot of hard work…we’ve got a lot more to do, but there’s progress,” Biden added.
Biden, 80-years old, then described some of his administration’s initiatives, including supporting an Israeli-Lebanese maritime boundary deal and backing Saudi and Omani decisions to allow Israeli flights over their territory.
This is when Biden continued multiple times to pronounce the names of Aqaba, Jordan, and Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt; where Israeli and Palestinian leaders recently met with the involvement of the US and Middle Eastern governments.
“As I affirmed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, America’s commitment to Israel is firm and it is iron-clad and we’re committed as well to assure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon,” Biden added at his only public event of the day, at which he took no reporter questions.
The White House has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu’s conservative government for its efforts to reform the Israeli court system, an idea advanced by religious and nationalistic politicians allied with Netanyahu, that has triggered large protests by both secular Israelis and opponents of West Bank settlements.
Herzog replied to Biden, “There are some enemies of ours that sometimes have mistaken the fact that we may have some differences as impacting our unbreakable bond.”
The Israeli president will speak to a joint meeting of Congress Wednesday to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Israel’s independence, though members of the left-wing “Squad” have lined up to boycott the event.
At least five Democrats are expected to skip Herzog’s remarks; Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York.
