A brief clip of President Joe Biden’s Tuesday speech has accumulated millions of online exchanges, attracting mockery and comparisons with Will Ferrell’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy character from traditional media outlets and social media users.
Several commentators transmitted a seven-second video of Biden’s address on the economy, which seems to show him speaking. The phrase was teased by social media users and several media platforms while reading his economics speech from a teleprompter.
Joe Biden accidentally reads the part on the teleprompter that says "repeat the line" when they wanted him to say the line again lmfao pic.twitter.com/pS3GdXPe5N
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 8, 2022
Others called the speech Biden’s Ron Burgundy moment, blamed him for reading word-for-word pedagogy, and even pointed out the alleged imitation pas is expressive of cognitive decline.
The widely transmitted clip seems to have been deliberately taken out of context. The full video of the address, titled Remarks on the Economy and Lowering Prices for the American People and running just over an hour, is available on the White House’s YouTube channel. In the address, the president references his meeting with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, whom he then cites.
And, by the way, you may have heard the CEO of Walmart yesterday on the steps we’ve taken. He said The blend of private enterprise and government working together has been successful. The president continued, He went on to say, Through the supply chain, there’s a lot of innovation. Because of the actions we’ve taken, things have begun to change.
One situation apparent from the speech transcript broadcasted by the White House is that McMillon’s quote closes with an extra sentence that was not part of the McMillon statement that Biden appears to mention. Videos of McMillon speaking to MSNBC do not show him saying Because of the actions we’ve taken, things have begun to change.
It is not transparent whether the insertion of that sentence in McMillon’s quote was deliberate or accidental. If it was the latter, it’s not clear if Biden’s misreading came from an autocue or a technical error made by the speechwriters.
