‘Jackie, Are You Here?’ Biden Asks For Deceased Congresswoman at White House Event

President Joe Biden called for Indiana Congresswoman Jackie Walorski at a conference on hunger, apparently forgetting she had passed away.

Summary

President Joe Biden called for Indiana Congresswoman Jackie Walorski at a conference on hunger, apparently forgetting she had passed away in a car accident in August.

• The President thanked conference organizers before asking, “Jackie are you here? Where’s Jackie?”
• When questioned, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would not admit that Biden had made an error and repeated nearly a dozen times that Walorski was “top of mind” for the President.
• In one sharp exchange, a reporter said, “I have John Lennon top of mind just about every day but I’m not looking around for him anywhere,” Jean-Pierre responded: “When you sign a bill for John Lennon as president, then we can have this conversation.”
• Jean-Pierre also declined to answer questions about whether the Walorski comments were part of Biden’s prepared speech or if he would apologize to her family.

• The New York Times noted the White House had sent out condolences after Walorski’s death in a car crash in August and linked the gaffe to allegations that Biden “lacks the mental capacity to be president,” an allegation Biden and his team have routinely rejected.
• The Washington Post connected the episode with Biden’s “long history of gaffes and mistakes” including a 2008 incident where he asked a wheelchair-bound man to stand up for recognition.
• CNN argued the “whopper” of a gaffe “plays right into Republicans’ hands.” The President, a self-described “gaffe machine,” made a “pretty big mistake” that “plays into a caricature.”

• Fox News wrote Jean-Pierre faced 10 questions about Biden’s gaffe at her Wednesday press briefing and repeated fourteen times her line that Biden had Walorski “top of mind” as he will meet with her family on Friday.
• The Washington Examiner observed Biden was naming “food security ‘congressional champions’” like Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) and the late Rep. Walorski.
• National Review asked why the White House is so stubborn about acknowledging Biden’s habitual forgetfulness. “Acknowledging a routine memory lapse is harmless to most presidents, but in this administration, admitting the president has forgotten anything is likely to spur the fair question, “say, how is Joe Biden’s memory these days?””

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© Dominic Moore, 2022