President Joe Biden told former President Barack Obama that Vice President Kamala Harris is “not as strong as me,” to which Obama agreed, “That is true,” according to a professional lipreader, who deciphered the off-mic conversation at Ethel Kennedy’s Wednesday funeral.
The comments suggest Biden and Obama perhaps have doubts about Harris’s electability with less than three weeks to go until Election Day.
The comments also indicate that Biden hopes Harris beats former President Donald Trump, a point debated among Republicans, who cite instances of Biden undercutting Harris’s campaign narratives as evidence to the contrary.
Jeremy Freeman, a London-based forensic lip reader, translated the conversation for the New York Post, the paper reported:
“She’s not as strong as me,” said Biden, 81, according the translation, which was produced by analyzing the on-video lip movements during the discussion.
“I know … that’s true,” the popular former president agreed, adding, “We have time.”
“Yeah, we’ll get it in time,” said Biden, who was forced by fellow Democrats to relinquish the party’s nomination in favor of Harris on July 21 in a mutiny that Obama was believed to support.
“It’s important that we have some time together,” Obama said moments earlier, potentially referencing holding an event with Harris.
During the conversation, Biden appeared to irritate Obama, who crossed his arms, did not look Biden in the eye, and had a sour facial expression.
At one point, Obama tried to walk away, but Biden touched his arm and Obama turned to say a few more words.
Andrew Bates, Biden’s spokesman, told the Post he was not happy that it worked with a lipreader to decipher the dialog.
“A ‘lip reading expert’? Did your usual right-wing soothsayer have their out-of-office up? Only President Biden and President Obama know what they discussed, but this certainly wasn’t it,” he said.
Obama emerged on the campaign trail last week after polling showed Harris performing poorly among the black community.
Obama was direct in his remarks to the black Harris supporters, and in particular to black men, who are failing to support Harris with the numbers they showed in support of Biden.Among black men, only 80 percent support Harris, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll recently found, while a NAACP poll found one in four under the age of 50 showed support for Trump.Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
