As my colleague Bob Hoge reported, Joe Biden's speech on Israel and Ukraine on Thursday night was a complete mess. He was requesting aid for Israel, Ukraine, and the Palestinians in Gaza. 

He started not being aware that the was live on the air, so there was this awkward pause. 

You're live, Joe! pic.twitter.com/hc8cVoY6KR

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 20, 2023

But that's typical Joe; he always seems to have some difficulty.

I'm not sure what he thought he would achieve with the speech. I think he was trying to use the support for Israel to bootstrap a comparison to Ukraine, to try to justify why we should support both, but they're not the same. And in the case of Hamas, they killed and kidnapped Americans. But that, which should be the focus of his efforts, seemed to get short shrift in Biden's remarks. He made brief mention of them but spent far more time talking about how we had to help the Palestinians, saying he was "heartbroken" by the loss of Palestinian lives rather than those of Americans or Israelis. He claimed that Hamas doesn’t represent the people when indeed, that’s exactly what they do since they are the “elected” government. He also spoke about Islamophobia and the murder of a child in the U.S. and commented, "You are all America," like listeners would think they were more worthy as people if he told them they were. It was a strange remark. 

Biden: "I know many of you in the Muslim American community are outraged saying to yourself 'here we go again' with Islamophobia and distress we saw after 9/11" pic.twitter.com/ucHcH6dBti

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 20, 2023

Biden: "We must denounce anti-Semitism. We must also denounce Islamophobia." pic.twitter.com/Cc8v5XGwZ4

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 20, 2023

He may have meant to say, "You're all Americans," but he couldn't read the teleprompter again. 

Also, he may point out antisemitism in the U.S., but he fails to call out members of his own party such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for that exact thing.

Even as he spoke about the aid that might go to Gaza, he couldn’t guarantee that Hamas wouldn’t grab it. 

I'm confused. Who was attacked here? Wasn't it Israel and innocent Americans? Why was the focus on the Palestinians and Islamophobia? 

He had another fight with the teleprompter when he spoke about Ukraine and Russia. 

BIDEN v TELEPROMPTER: "We'll have something that we do not seek, make it clear we do not seek, we do not seek to have American troops fighting in Russia. Or fighting against Russia." pic.twitter.com/6dNxS6meE4

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 20, 2023

But if he was trying to make the case for continuously pouring American money into Ukraine by using Israel, that didn't work. 

Indeed he tried to say he had been to both war zones in Israel and Ukraine. He pumped himself up, claiming he'd been there when the "sirens" were going off. As we've previously reported, there weren't any attacks, and the cameras were rolling for that obvious photo op. He has no shame at all to bring that up now when that's already been exposed. 

But the thing he missed in trying to pump himself up was that he reminded everyone that we wouldn't have these war zones where he could get his photo ops without his bad foreign policy. 

I think he not only was trying to make the case for more money, but he was also trying to reinvigorate his polls which are truly in the dumpster, by trying to sound like a leader. And if that was what he was trying to do, he failed big time.