Miranda Devine: US President Joe Biden gets helping hand from wife

Now the Bidens are in the White House, it is a bad look for the First Lady to be sitting alongside the President in serious interviews answering policy questions on his behalf.

By now, the world knows that the 78-year-old US president Joe Biden struggles to speak coherently without notes or a tele-prompter.

That much was evident during last year’s election campaign, although with Donald Trump consuming most of the media’s attention, the import may have escaped the notice of most voters.

But now it’s impossible to hide, however hard his minders try. Unusually for a president he has not given a single press conference in the six weeks he has been in office.

US President Joe Biden. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Instead, he performs short set pieces for the cameras, sometimes signing executive orders while reading aloud from notes to say what they are. Other times he will appear at a podium and read a short speech from a tele-prompter, invariably stumbling over words and seeing to have little comprehension of what he is saying.

He goofs off on weekends and calls an early “lid” on events most days.

His ever-watchful wife, Jill - or Dr Jill, as she likes to be called, since she holds a doctorate in education - always hovers by his side.

Her constant presence was unremarkable during the campaign since candidate’s wives are regarded as political assets who can swing votes in crucial demographics.

US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden make their way to board Air Force One. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

But now the Bidens are in the White House, it is a very bad look for the First Lady to be sitting alongside the President in serious interviews answering policy questions on his behalf.

It is not her role to butt in on her husband to provide a better answer or prompt him when he forgets words, as he so often does.

The American people need to know that their president knows what he is doing and can be held accountable for his statements.

The First Lady’s interventions were blatant during an interview with Latin American channel Univision last week.

Joe kept losing his train of thought and you could hear Dr Jill whispering to him the words that eluded him.

The conversation soon turned to the reopening of detention centres for thousands of child migrants who have been illegally pouring over the southern border since the Biden administration began dismantling Trump-era border protection measures. Australians know exactly how that story ends.

Joe started waffling and so Dr Jill interjected to give her uninvited opinion. The “cages”, as Democrats used to call housing for child migrants when Trump was president, were “humane” under Biden, she said.

What would she know? No one elected her. All she does is draw attention to her husband’s frailties and beg the frightening question: who actually is making the decisions?

You can bet America’s enemies around the world - in particular Chinese president Xi Jinping – are taking note.