But there was a discord in the cozy circle in which about 30 people had gathered: At the front of the room, where the president was speaking, there was a lectern and a teleprompter, two large screens that hovered about two meters above the floor.
It was a physical expression of the kind of accommodations that White House officials have extended to the aging president over the past year. But while most of those changes were aimed at easing his physical discomforts — tennis shoes and shorter steps on Air Force One so he doesn’t stumble; shorter distances so his short gait isn’t so pronounced; his wife nearby to help him climb the stairs — the teleprompter was the most important accommodation for a president whose speech is sometimes aimless and who seems to lose his thread.
A hallmark of Biden’s political career was his candor and his demeanor as a spontaneous politician who rarely concealed his true thoughts. He called himself a “breakdown machine,” a trait that endeared him to voters even as it gave his advisers heartburn.
“Nobody doubts that I mean what I say,” the president has often said. “The problem is that sometimes I say exactly what I mean.”
In recent years, his advisers have tried to keep him more in check, especially since he has reached a position where a small verbal misstep can have global repercussions.
Yet early in his presidency, he went largely unscripted at fundraisers when he spoke to his biggest fans and offered a more raw look into the president’s mind. In such situations, he announced fundraising numbers earlier than his advisers wanted him to, offered blunt assessments of foreign adversaries like Russian President Vladimir Putin, or made candid remarks about Donald Trump when he rarely spoke about his predecessor.
But that too has changed recently, as the off-the-cuff president has been replaced by Teleprompter Joe. And that has not gone unnoticed by donors, who are increasingly exposed not to the president’s informal private remarks but to the same scripted comments he makes in public. And now some donors fear that his advisers are providing those scripts in part to avoid the kinds of moments the public witnessed during the presidential debate, a rare occurrence when Biden couldn’t read notes and didn’t have the benefit of a teleprompter.
Before press conferences, his staff calls reporters to find out what questions they might ask, a practice that was uncommon under previous presidencies. Biden’s team has simply turned down some major interview opportunities, such as the Super Bowl, wasting an opportunity that most politicians would eagerly seize.
Over the past year, Biden has almost never appeared in public without a teleprompter, with the rare exceptions being press conferences, which have been rare, and media interviews, which he has counted as rare as any president in recent history.
Biden’s aides argue that teleprompters have become routine equipment for every politician, as he has to juggle endless meetings and tasks and has no time to rehearse before each appearance.
“Look, it’s not unusual for a president to use a teleprompter. It’s not unusual,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week when asked about the president’s reliance on canned remarks. “It’s something presidents have done in the past.”
The Biden campaign team said the president does much of his delicate and demanding work behind the scenes without teleprompters or other aids.
“The president regularly attends meetings without a teleprompter, not least in contentious negotiations with key politicians from around the world and Republican leaders in the House and Senate,” said campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt.
“By Republicans’ own assessment, he handled these negotiations more than adeptly. He used his experience and acumen to avoid multiple government shutdowns, deliver aid to Ukraine and stand up to Putin, pass the first bipartisan gun reform in 30 years, and finally provide much-needed funding for our country’s crumbling infrastructure,” she added.
A teleprompter has limits, and Biden can still deviate from it and sometimes make comments that deviate from the official White House line. For example, at the end of a speech in Poland, he improvised that Putin “cannot stay in power,” forcing his advisers to clarify that US policy had not changed and now included regime change in Moscow.
Biden’s reliance on the teleprompter has become increasingly problematic at high-profile fundraisers, where supporters pay thousands of dollars for a private audience with the president, often in an off-the-record setting, some aides and donors say. The campaign faced numerous concerns, particularly after an April fundraiser in Chicago at the home of Michael Sacks, a major Democratic donor.
Biden spoke for just 14 minutes, took no questions, and then left the office, disappointing as he had hoped for more opportunities to interact with the president, according to people familiar with the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. Even with a teleprompter, Biden struggled with his speech, and some donors said they had difficulty understanding him. After the event, several donors in attendance complained to campaign staff about Biden’s use of a teleprompter in a space as intimate as the Sacks’ living room.
Biden himself often worries about whether he is well prepared, aides and colleagues say. The president, who has overcome a childhood stutter that still occasionally resurfaces, spends a lot of time working on speeches, and especially during his campaign four years ago he said, “A president’s words matter.” He fine-tunes his phrasing, careful not to make a mistake. And – perhaps a legacy of his 1988 presidential campaign, which was derailed by plagiarism allegations – he now sometimes attributes even banal phrases to other sources.
“As the old saying goes, ‘Give me a chance,'” he said during the election campaign in August 2020.
But Biden has refused to stick to his message throughout his career, and his disgruntled advisers have used teleprompters to try to keep him on track.
When he was vice president, military officers operating the device often struggled to keep up because Biden so often deviated from the text he was supposed to read. At one point, the teleprompter unexpectedly restarted near the end of a speech, forcing Biden to improvise while his then-speechwriter, Dylan Loewe, frantically retyped the conclusion in real time.
“When it was over, I thought he was mad,” Loewe said in an earlier interview. “But he came over, gave me a high five and said, ‘That was the most fun I’ve had today.'”
“Some of his worst moments came when he went off script,” he added. “But most of his best moments came that way, too.”
In addition to their dependence on the teleprompter, donors are also frustrated by Biden’s refusal to answer questions at his fundraisers.
A business executive who organized a fundraiser last year said some donors backed out and refused to donate or attend the fundraiser after learning they were not allowed to ask questions. Many of them had written large checks for $100,000 or more. The business executive said when they helped raise money for Biden in 2020, it was clear he was “fragile,” but he was sharp and charming and “seemed composed.”
“The donors I talk to are depressed,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. “It’s just total chaos. Everyone knew he wasn’t as sharp as he used to be, but the debate really shocked people.”
In the days since the debate, Biden and his team have tried to reassure Democrats that his performance last week was an exception, but his appearances at a series of fundraisers in the days since have done little to calm them.
“What pissed people off was that they waited three hours and he spoke for (eight) minutes,” said a donor who attended a fundraiser in East Hampton, N.Y., on Saturday. “It was a teleprompter. No questions. He was gone. They were disappointed by the brevity of his speeches, the lack of interaction with the crowd, that he didn’t take questions.”
The donor said he had probably attended 10 or 15 fundraisers with Biden in the past, and the “problem in the past was you couldn’t get him to stop answering questions. He stayed forever. He never left. He worked his way through the line and shook everyone’s hand, he wanted to answer more questions than the audience even had.”
After months of relying on a teleprompter and facing mounting criticism, Biden’s aides finally decided to appear without a teleprompter on Tuesday. As he began speaking in a living room in McLean, Virginia, he stood in front of a large fireplace and addressed several dozen people.
He came up with a new line suggesting that his busy schedule and overseas travel were a reason for his poor performance at the debate, and added a punch line: “I came back and almost fell asleep on the stage,” Biden said to some laughter.
But he also spoke quietly at times, and some lines were barely audible from the back of the hall. After about six minutes, he finished his speech before singer Renée Fleming came on to perform Ella Fitzgerald’s song “All the Things You Are.”
