Biden Ends National Prayer Breakfast Remarks with 'Hell' Mix-Up
CORRECTION, Feb. 5, 2024: Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in an attack outside the Kabul airport during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. An earlier version of this article had a different number.
Speechwriters can only do so much. Nothing can save a speech when you have a bumbling buffoon who slurs his words, presents in an undignified manner and represents everything the speech is not. Nothing.
Enter President Joe Biden, whose attendance at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday morning undoubtedly provoked Christians across the United States and around the world to wrestle with the Bible verse, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
That’s hard to do when you’re watching the guy who has spent the last three years destroying your nation and your life give lessons in ethics, morality and behavior with barely any mention of God and only vague references to prayer and faith.
But that is where a Christian’s own faith comes in. In the difficult times, you must continue to have it while allowing God to play things out as he’s designed them too. It is easy to have faith in the good times.
No doubt, Biden was delighted with his performance, although an enormous faux pas at the end of his speech threw him.
“But remember — let’s remember who the hell we — who we are,” he said.
Nothing like using “hell” as your go-to word when describing what our nation stands for at the National Prayer Breakfast.
The slip-up is revealing and, once again, embarrassing on the world stage. It makes us look like easy pickings to our enemies.
In the condition the United States is at present, they wouldn’t be wrong.
In his mentally incapacitated state, however, Biden sees none of this. The doddering fool, you’d feel sorry for him if only he didn’t show glimpses of pure evilness during those few seconds of complete clarity.
It was no different at the National Prayer Breakfast. From the moment that he took to the podium, his enunciation of words, especially as he segued between sentences, was deplorable.
True to form, the president uncouthly referred to Heidi Heitkamp, the chairwoman of the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, as “kid” when recognizing her.
“Heidi, I hadn’t seen you in a while,” Biden said to the 68-year-old former senator. “It’s so good to see you again, kid. It really is.”
He sounded like he was speaking at a high school awards dinner instead of the formal, sacred event that this was. Seriously?
Even some of Biden’s jokes were distasteful. When addressing Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware in the speech, the president noted that Coons had earned a law degree at the same time he earned a divinity degree from Yale University.
“Makes me always wonder about him,” Biden said. “I don’t know.”
To be an attorney and a man of faith — you could see why this coupling might perplex the president.
What left me severely perplexed was Biden’s hommage to a prayer given by Barry Black, the Senate chaplain, 15 years ago.
“Chaplain Black, we’ve known each other a long time,” the president said. “And on my last day in the Senate Chamber, you offered a prayer: that in our labor may we illuminate the darkness of doubt, may we distinguish between truth and falsehood, and may we see possibilities that are now hidden.”
That prayer has really come to life for Americans since Biden took office. We see the darkness, for certain, regarding the deceptive nature of our entire government. We also recognize truth and falsehood like we’ve never known it in our nation before. And we realize the possibilities of our uncertain outcome in the face of this year’s presidential election.
In one of the few times he did mention God, Biden uttered in the very next breath, “We leave no one behind. We believe everyone deserves a fair shot.”
I could hardly believe my ears, thinking back to the 13 service members killed in Afghanistan during his disastrous withdrawal. Where’s their fair shot, Joe?
In his closing, the president declared, “We’re the only nation in the world that has come out of every crisis stronger than we went in when we act together.” I thought to myself that we can only pray.
Biden’s term has been one enormous crisis. If we do come out strong, it will be by the grace of God, not by his stewardship.
Ultimately, it was a hell of a speech — right out of the pits of hell, as the president so eloquently reminded us.
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