God this is brutal. The Telegraph on Biden:
“Anyway” is a word that is constantly being used by Mr Biden – seemingly when he senses he is starting to lose track of what he is saying.
The US president sometimes uses it as a filler, giving himself time to marshal his thoughts before returning to the subject. More disconcertingly, he often uses it to change subject abruptly or trail off altogether.
…
Mr Biden uses “look” in a similar manner to “anyway” – to throw himself a lifeline when he cannot remember how a sentence is meant to end.
The tactic, if not elegant, puts a stop to the long silences that marred his debate performance and stops him wandering up a rhetorical blind alley.
In a recent NBC News interview, he was asked about his “first reaction” to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“My first reaction was, “My God. This is –” Mr Biden said, and promptly lost track of the sentence. “Look, there’s so much violence now and the way we talk about it.”
He went on to use the word repeatedly in the interview while being pressed about his comments on putting Trump in a “bullseye”.
“I was talking about focus on – look,” he said, blinking rapidly and holding out his hands as if trying to physically grasp his answer. “The truth of the matter was what I guess I was talking about at the time was there was very little focus on Trump’s agenda.”
…
But recently his speech has become less distinct, as he slurs his words and mumbles to the point where it is impossible to work out what he is saying.
In his NBC News interview, this happened when he was asked whether he would drop out of the race if he repeated his disastrous debate performance.
“What happened…” Mr Biden said before tailing off. NBC’s transcribers gave up at that point, marking the rest of the sentence “INAUDIBLE”.
…
At the Nato press conference, he suddenly became animated by the subject of school shootings, which had not even been mentioned by his questioner.
“More children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death,” he shouted in an apparent fury, making stabbing motions with one hand while the other clenched his lectern.
His voice raised and brows tightly knitted together, he continued: “The United States of America. What the hell are we doing?” A few seconds later, he clenched his fist and waved it in the air.
…
Abrupt changes in volume have become a hallmark of Mr Biden’s speeches.
While he is prone to suddenly start shouting, at other times he will break into an exaggerated stage whisper without warning.
The habit is more common in press conferences than set-piece speeches, where the president seems to be suggesting to reporters that – even though up on stage with a microphone – he is confiding in them.
The effect can be slightly eerie, however. Unfriendly news outlets have dubbed it the “creepy whisper”.
He stares a lot.
In his first presidential debate with Trump in 2020, Mr Biden barely looked at his opponent and treated him as an irritating side-show.
While the Republican hectored, heckled and interrupted him, the Democrat stuck to his scripted remarks, addressing them to the studio audience or speaking directly to the camera.
The positions were reversed in their latest showdown in June. Mr Biden spent much of the night in profile as he turned over to stare at Trump, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in a permanent expression of befuddlement.
…
Recently, the Democrat has developed a habit of appearing to stare off blankly into space at public events.
At a “Juneteenth” concert in the grounds of the White House, Mr Biden appeared frozen, grinning vaguely while his arms stuck rigidly at his side. The impression was likely not helped by his spinal arthritis.
He appeared wide-eyed in a recent NBC News interview, as he defended himself from accusations of cognitive decline.
“My mental acuity’s been pretty damn good,” he insisted, sliding out of his chair towards interviewer Lester Holt, while staring at him unblinkingly. “I’ve gotten more done than any president has in a long, long time.”
And then there’s blinking.
A key sign that Mr Biden is struggling to recall something is that he will blink rapidly when he is trying to respond.
He spent much of the presidential debate struggling to dredge up various facts and figures, blinking constantly as he cast his mind back to practice sessions at Camp David.
…
During his NBC News interview, he blinked rapidly at the start of virtually every question as he tried to marshal his thoughts.
“The truth of the matter was what I guess I was talking about at the time was there’s very little focus on Trump’s agenda,” he said at one point, blinking 17 times in the space of a few seconds.
Brutal.