Biden’s Ron Burgundy Speech on Ukraine

BUCK: Biden gave a speech yesterday. We were on air. We didn’t want to go to it live, and I also told you — and I mean this — it really did feel like he was having kind of a Ron Burgundy moment. For those of you who are Anchorman fans, who know about kind of reading off the prompter, like it wasn’t — doesn’t really matter what he’s saying, “I am Ron Burgundy.” He just was muttering. He seemed almost not entirely present. Instead of just my version of it, here’s just a portion of it from yesterday. Play it.

BIDEN: Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbors? This is a flagrant violation of international law, and it demands a firm response from the international community. Over the last few months, we’ve coordinated closely with our NATO allies and partners in Europe and the around the world to prepare that response. We’ve said all long — and told Putin face to face to face more than a month ago — that we would act together and the moment Russia moved against Ukraine, Russia has now undeniably moved against Ukraine by declaring these independent states. So, today I’m announcing the first tranche of sanctions to impose costs on Russia in response to their actions yesterday.

BUCK: This fellow is kind of going through the motions like he knows he’s not really gonna do anything. He wasn’t even doing the usual Biden yelling stuff, you know?

CLAY: You and I, I think, more so than the you can’t answer probably can tell when somebody’s telepromptering something.

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: And if you’ve ever set down… ( know most people haven’t because before I started doing television, I had no earthly idea. But if you’ve ever sat down and read off of a teleprompter or tried to get better at reading off a teleprompter and following the guidelines and everything else, Buck, it appears to me that Biden has progressed beyond where they can ever trust him to the point where he’s not even able to read very well off the prompter.

Honestly, it’s kind of terrifying, because we all know and have wondered who are making the decisions inside of the Biden White House now. But he reads this stuff now like it’s a terrorist video. I watched him read some of this, and it feels like he is struggling so hard to just follow and read what is showing up on the screen in front of him — and as you heard during those clips, he’s not even doing a very good job of reading at this point.

BUCK: It just feels like he is somewhat disconnected from all this because it’s going to poorly, and Joe Biden’s a guy who got used to be being vice president for eight years under Obama where he really just had to show up. Now it matters what he sounds like, what he says, what the decisions are, whatever decisions he makes. I know there’s a lot of questions around who really does make the decisions in this White House.

But this is going very poorly, and this is a guy who isn’t at a place honestly in terms of his cognition and his energy and his overall health — he’s not in a place — where he should be in this role, which was clear all along. Just remember, folks, they were trying to have constant news cycles about the 25th Amendment under the Trump administration. Remember this?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Donald Trump would go out and do two-, three-hour-long rallies off the cuff to crowds that were absolutely fired up and was saying funny things and insightful things. Joe Biden shows up, squints into the camera, mutters some nonsense, and the Democrats all say, “Oh, so much relief from having somebody who’s an adult in the room!” They’re just unserious people, Clay, in serious times. That’s the problem.