There are several White House staffers who decided to mute their TV or turning it off altogether whenever President Joe Biden speaks with reporters because they are nervous their boss will commit a gaffe or veer off message, Politico reported.
"I know people who habitually don't watch it live for that reason," one White House official told Politico's West Wing Playbook newsletter.
Biden, a self-proclaimed "gaffe machine," has tripped over his words and put his foot in his mouth many times over his lengthy political career, including as Barack Obama's running mate and as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020.
Biden's stumbles have included him describing Obama in 2007 as "articulate" and "bright and clean" and the time he got ahead of the then-president in 2012 by coming out in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage before him. And in his 2020 campaign, he frequently mixed up places within the US. He also said, "Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids," and, "We choose facts over truth."
This year, Biden misspoke in saying he had come to the Senate 120 years ago. More recently, he said that 90 percent of Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan had gotten out. The White House later clarified that the figure was 98 percent.
But Biden's verbal stumbles, especially those related to Afghanistan, are coming under particular scrutiny as his administration faces multiple foreign and domestic crises, which have it contending with the first-year summer slump that's befallen many administrations.
Biden had perhaps his roughest month yet in August as the US military withdrew from Afghanistan, the Delta variant drove a surge in COVID-19 cases, natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires ravaged the country, and a disappointing jobs report was released.