Biden Appears To Read Aloud ‘Pause’ Instruction From Teleprompter

President Joe Biden is saying the quiet part out loud.

During remarks at an event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Biden appeared to state an instruction on the teleprompter that he was not meant to read aloud.

He was talking about his vision for a second term when Biden said, “Imagine what we can do next. Four more years. Pause.”

Biden looked as if he was squinting at the teleprompter before flashing a smile as people in the audience broke into a chant of “Four more years!”

BIDEN, reading from his teleprompter: "Four more years? Pause?"

It's all completely staged. pic.twitter.com/vqkIt0SSTF

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 24, 2024

The apparent flub did not go unnoticed, as it was shared on X by a Republican National Committee (RNC) account, gathering more than 1.6 million views as of press time.

Among those to mock Biden was Richard Grenell, who served as a U.S. ambassador and acting director of national intelligence during the Trump administration.

“Joe Biden said the word ‘pause’ because it was written in his teleprompter,” Grenell said on X. “It was there to tell him to pause before speaking again. But he read the word out loud.”

The slip may be a small one, but it is just the latest in a long series of gaffes that have fed concerns about Biden’s mental fitness and ability to keep serving as commander in chief at the age of 81.

Findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that were published in March showed 63% of U.S. adults were not very or not at all confident in Biden’s mental capacity for the presidency.

The survey, by comparison, found 57% of U.S. adults said the same about Trump, who is also running another White House campaign this year at the age of 77.

When questioned about concerns about his age, Biden sought to offer reassurances by saying, “Watch me.”

For those who did not see the clip and only looked at the transcript of Biden’s remarks on Wednesday, they would not get the impression that he read aloud a part of the teleprompter that he should not have.

Biden’s handlers want to pretend this highly embarrassing moment didn’t happen.

Here’s how it played out in the official White House transcript: pic.twitter.com/ZvM2noAKD5

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 24, 2024

That is because, as the RNC account pointed out, the transcript shows that part of what Biden said as “(inaudible)” despite the audio being very clear.

“Biden’s handlers want to pretend this highly embarrassing moment didn’t happen,” the account said on X.