(Daily Mail) A sleepy President Joe Biden saw his rambling Vietnam press conference brought to a sudden end on Sunday night with his mic cut and jazz music playing him off the stage, like he went too long in an awards speech.
Biden was mid-flow and answering questions from journalists when he was interrupted and forced to shuffle away and head backstage.
‘We talked about stability, we talked about the Third World, excuse me, the Southern Hemisphere has access to change. It wasn’t confrontational at all….’ Biden said as he rambled on.
Suddenly, the booming voice of his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, could be heard butting in.
‘Thank you everybody. This ends the press conference. Thanks everyone,’ she said as she brought the presser to a close.
A sleepy Joe Biden saw his rambling Vietnam press conference brought to a sudden end on Sunday night with a mic cut and jazz music playing him off the stage
Biden was mid-flow and answering questions from journalists when he was interrupted
Suddenly, the booming voice of his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre , could be heard butting in and thanking people for attending
All the while, Biden continued to speak, not realizing his mic had been muted.
In another bizarre twist, jazz music then began to play over the loudspeaker, with the 80-year-old still seemingly trying to answer questions as he continued to speak into the microphone.
As the president tried to answer a few more questions, the music grew louder prompting Biden to put away his leather-backed folder and shuffle offstage, disappearing behind a black curtain.
Biden whispered, he walked about the stage and he used that now-famous phrase ‘lying dog faced pony soldier’ during the 26-minute engagement with the press, using a set list of reporters to call on.
After spending two days in India for the G20 Leaders‘ Summit, Biden jetted to Vietnam Sunday to upgrade the countries’ diplomatic ties and ended the day with a press conference.
In what was supposed to be a show of stamina – Biden is circumnavigating the globe in five days – the 80-year-old commander-in-chief joked about not knowing if it was morning or night and ended the presser event by saying, ‘I’m going to go to bed.’
He regaled reporters with a story he says is from a John Wayne movie and features the ‘Indians’ – not the ones he just met with – who don’t buy it when a Union soldier says ‘everything will be good’ if they go back to the reservation.
Biden held a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, Sunday night after spending two days in India for the G20 Leaders’ Summit. At the presser, he talked to reporters about a John Wayne movie that featured the ‘Indians’ to make a point about climate change
After his mic was cut, Biden tried to speak not realizing he had been silenced. He had to shuffle off the stage as jazz music loudly played
‘And the Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, ‘He’s a lying dog faced pony soldier.’ Well, there’s a lot of lying dog faced pony soldiers out there about global warming. But not anymore,’ Biden said. ‘All of the sudden, they’re all realizing it’s a problem,’ the president said, whispering into the mic.
The president had been asked if he was concerned that there was no agreement on fossil fuels that came out of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi.
He’s used ‘lying dog faced pony soldier,’ once at a 2020 campaign event in New Hampshire and at an event in Connecticut in June, where he also muttered, ‘God save the Queen, man.’
The press conference started more than an hour late and kicked off by the president acknowledging that his aides told him who he would be calling on.
‘They gave me five people here,’ Biden said, returning to his custom of both calling from, and speaking about, the list apologetically.
‘I’m just following my orders here,’ he said at another point, as he looked at his list to call another news organization or name, as reporters in the audience yelled and waved their hands frantically to be called on.
The questions were China-heavy and Biden skipped answering queries when they were piggybacked on another question – so he didn’t address Russia and North Korea going into business together, nor Ukraine’s discontent with the G20 statement on the war, which didn’t name Russia as the aggressor.
Biden grabbed the hand mic and left the podium at one point to address a reporter who was standing to one side of the room
The president admitted his whirlwind schedule had left him confused over whether it was day or night
Biden with general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party Nguyen Phu Trong
The choice of journalist also appeared to have Biden mostly ignoring a group of U.S. print and TV reporters who were girding to get into domestic concerns like his low poll numbers due to his advanced age and a possible indictment of his son, Hunter, on a gun charge.
Those polls show a broad concern about his age going into a second term, with a survey last week from AP-NORC showing that 77 percent of Americans, including 69 percent of Democrats, believe Biden is too old to run for reelection.
A Wall Street Journal poll out Monday had similar findings, with 73 percent of voters saying Biden is too old to run again, including two-thirds of Democrats.
White House aides pointed to this whirlwind trip as evidence that Biden is up to the job.
‘It is evening isn’t it?’ Biden cracked at the top of the press conference.
‘This around the world in five days is interesting,’ he also noted.
He later joked that the schedule was ‘no problem.’
‘I can imagine. It is evening, I’d like remind you,’ a BBC reporter quipped to the president.
At one point, Biden grabbed the hand mic and started walking.
He moved toward the side of the stage where one of the five chosen reporters was standing, but it briefly gave the appearance he was abandoning the press conference.
Every reporter on the list was a woman, something that wasn’t lost on a journalist from the independent U.S.-backed Voice of America.
‘Thank you Mr. President. I hope you didn’t think that calling only on women would get you softballs tonight,’ she told him.
Biden made a reference to Good Morning Vietnam, a movie that he said was a song. Pictured: Actor Robin Williams who started in the 1987 movie
