Joe Biden’s big boy press conference was as disastrous as the debate ... and he’s all but doomed

Joe Biden's performance at his 'Big Boy' press conference was as bad as the debate. Picture compilation: Geordie Gray

Joe Biden has very probably delivered his last press conference as the presumptive Democratic party nominee for president.

His much-anticipated question and answer session on the heels of the NATO summit on Thursday (Friday AEST) was a disaster, little better than his devastating performance exactly a fortnight ago in Atlanta, which triggered a crisis of confidence in his cognitive ability.

This was meant to be his last ditch hope of saving his candidacy amid increasingly loud and public calls among elected Democrats, and even among his own staff who have started to leak that he must go, to save his candidacy.

If the floodgates weren’t open before the press conference, they are now.

Rambling, slow, sometimes incoherent, occasionally yelling or whispering into the microphone, the large pool of reporters at the Washington Convention Centre sat in stunned silence as the President kicked off the 45 minute Q and A by referring to Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump.

“Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if I didn’t think she was not qualified to be president,” Mr Biden said.

Perhaps the error shouldn’t have been a surprise. A couple of hours earlier, the president introduced Volodymyr Zelensky as Vladimir Putin when standing alongside the other NATO leaders at the tail end of the 75th anniversary conference.

“Now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” he said, before correcting himself a few second later.

The president uttered words that suggested he would be staying in the race, touting his legislative record, his alleged economic and foreign policy achievements, but it didn’t seem his heart was in it anymore.

“I’m not in this for my legacy, I’m in this to complete the job I started,” he said, vowing to “finish the job” even as his chance of being re-elected in November tumbled to a new low of 10 per cent according to US bookies, half those of his deputy Ms Harris.

“I’m going to be going around making the case for the things that I think we have to finish,” he added, but few really believed it.

Talk in Washington has switched entirely to when and how to replace him, which isn’t easy given only he can make that decision, unless a majority of his cabinet decide to remove him using the 25th amendment, a possibility still remote but not as much as it might have been a week ago.

Bizarrely dubbed a ‘big boy’ press conference earlier in the week by staff, Mr Biden, 81, didn’t rise the challenge at what was only his 8th solo press conference of his presidency.

Perhaps most strangely, the president didn’t appear to know his own role. “I’m following the advice of my commander-in-chief,” he said at one point.

Mr Biden conceded he did need to pace himself more as he chastised his staff mildly for giving him a too hectic schedule. “I love my staff, but they add things. They add things at the end. I’m catching hell from my wife for that”.

US President Joe Biden. Pucture: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images via AFP

“If Biden is this bad NOW, how is he going to look 4 YEARS FROM NOW?? This is DANGEROUS!! We barely survived his first term,” said Republican congressman and former White House doctor Ronny Jackson toward the end of the performance. It’s a fair question.

The only piece of real foreign policy news to emerge from the press conference was Biden’s confirmation he wouldn’t let Ukraine fire long range missiles at Moscow, a source of disappointment among some foreign policy experts who see it as the best way to defeat Russia in Ukraine.

But the credibility of his foreign policy decisions mean increasingly less as the clock ticks on his hold on power.