Retiring President Biden noted Tuesday that he’s leaving office next month — telling an audience in Angola that “you don’t have to clap” — after stumbling and referring to the country as a “city.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I’m in the final weeks of my presidency. You don’t have to clap for that. You can if you want,” Biden, 82, said while speaking behind a glass barrier streaked by rain.
The lame duck began his highly anticipated speech on an awkward note when he hailed “Angola, a vibrant city” before attempting to mop up the gaffe.
“Look, not the city,” he added. “The city, I know, is not Angola. But in Angola, in a vibrant city.”
He similarly referred to President-elect Donald Trump’s first term as spanning “eight years” before again catching himself and correctly saying four.
Biden also announced $1 billion in “new humanitarian support for Africans displaced from homes by historic droughts.”
He did not mention which countries would benefit from that aid and his other recent foreign financial pledges have been cast into doubt due to the fact that Trump, 78, will retake the White House on Jan. 20 after campaigning on an “America First” approach to the world.
Hours earlier, Biden was delicately maneuvered down a red carpet for a photo-op alongside Angola president João Lourenço — with his counterpart putting a hand on his back and pointing the way, recalling similar instances where world leaders treated Biden as if he was confused and needed direction, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s guidance in June at a skydiving demonstration.
The White House dismissed coverage of earlier instances of Biden seeming confused at such events as deceptive “cheap fake videos” that excluded significant context — but that defense was belied not long after by fellow Democratic leaders staging a mutiny and forcing Biden to give up the party’s presidential nomination due to what they too perceived as his cognitive decline.
Biden read from prepared remarks during his first visit to Africa as president, noting that the first slaves brought to the colony of Virginia in 1619 were from Angola and that Washington and Luanda are now working closely together after the US backed an insurgency against the formerly Soviet-backed government.
“The story of Angola and the United States holds a lesson for the world: two nations with a shared history, the evil of human bondage, two nations on opposite sides of the Cold War… and now two nations standing shoulder to shoulder, working together every day for the mutual benefit of our people,” Biden said.
“It’s a reminder that no nation need be permanently the adversary of another.”
Biden’s visit to oil-rich Angola is part of a broader American strategy to woo strategically significant developing countries away from Chinese influence through its “Belt and Road” initiative that’s featured major investments in ports and road across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Angola is Africa’s second-largest crude oil exporter and Biden administration outreach has included backing a $2 billion solar energy project — with the Export-Import Bank issuing a $900 million loan last year — along with plans to build a $1 billion US-funded railway linking the Atlantic Coast nation to the Indian Ocean.
