There’s a level to this story that makes it difficult to write about yet pertinent to the conversation at the same time.
On Wednesday, while speaking at a White House conference on food insecurity, President Biden appeared to call out for Rep. Jackie Walorski, a Republican co-sponsor of the legislation that created the conference. The only problem is that Walorski tragically passed away in a vehicle accident back in early August along with two of her staff.
Here’s Biden on stage calling out sponsors of the conference for recognition, a bi-partisan list, and then coming to Walorski and wondering where she is since she was supposed to be there:
As Reuters reports, it’s not debatable who Biden was referring to while some defended the misstep saying he was referring to a different Jackie:
U.S. President Joe Biden publicly sought out Jackie Walorski, an Indiana Congresswoman who died in a car accident in August, during a conference on hunger on Wednesday, seeming to forget that she had passed away.
Biden thanked other conference organizers, then asked: “Jackie are you here? Where’s Jackie?”
Walorski, a Republican, was one of four Congressional co-sponsors of the bill to fund the conference. She was killed with two staffers in early August.
Biden moved past the issue without any correction.
It’s a slip of the mind, to be sure. Biden temporarily forgot about Walorski’s accident even though he’s supposed to meet with her surviving family on Friday as part of a bill signing ceremony. The incident feeds questions about the President’s mental health and his ability to seriously launch a re-election bid for a second term in 2024.
Back in August, the Bidens released a statement praising Walorski for her bipartisan work and lamenting her loss in the House of Representatives:
Jill and I are shocked and saddened by the death of Congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana along with two members of her staff in a car accident today in Indiana.
Born in her beloved South Bend as the daughter of a meat-cutter and firefighter, she spent a lifetime serving the community that she grew up in – as a journalist, a nonprofit director, a state legislator, and eventually as a Member of Congress for the past nine and half years.
We may have represented different parties and disagreed on many issues, but she was respected by members of both parties for her work on the House Ways and Means Committee on which she served. She also served as co-chair of the House Hunger Caucus, and my team and I appreciated her partnership as we plan for a historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health this fall that will be marked by her deep care for the needs of rural America.
We send our deepest condolences to her husband, Dean, to the families of her staff members, Zachery Potts and Emma Thomson, who lost their lives in public service, and to the people of Indiana’s Second District who lost a representative who was one of their own.
When pressed about Biden’s obvious memory lapse, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stuck to the script. There was nothing odd about it, she insists, it’s just that Walorski was “top of mind” and it’s understandable that the Big Guy said her name out loud:
Then more reporters joined in trying to at least get some basic recognition that the President had a split-second lapse in memory and forgot that Walorksi was deceased:
There were a half-dozen reporters from various outlets asking about the incident and Jean-Pierre provided basically the same answer for a good 15 minutes. The narrative was clearly part of a strategy to avoid any admission that Biden’s memory lapsed and that he inadvertently called out a deceased Congresswoman despite being scheduled to meet with her surviving family just two days later.
In the grand scheme, this isn’t a big story. The real headline is that the White House press corps spending time trying to pick and prod at KJP and force a better answer when they’re being fed a load of garbage. One reporter even mentions people being concerned about the President’s ability which is why she was asking the question.
Doesn’t matter, the same script about Walorksi being “top of mind” was the accepted answer to provide.
