Democrat vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden made another huge gaffe on the campaign trail, this time telling a room full of high-dollar donors that if Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, to expect not only an international incident contrived specifically to test Obama’s mettle, but that Obama would most certainly need the help of these donors when they handle it in the wrong way. I am not making this up.
In the second of two Seattle fundraisers on Sunday, Biden said, “Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
Biden told the crowd to, “Gird their loins,” and said, “I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate." Biden prophesied both Russia and the Middle East as possible points of origin. Biden then said, “And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.”
Could Joe Biden actually be an Obama campaign saboteur? There must be some logical explanation. I asked Rudy Giuliani on a McCain-Palin press conference call if he had any ideas. The best I could come up with is that Biden has made some sort of deal with the Clintons to undermine the Obama campaign.
Giuliani told me, “First of all, if a Republican had made these statements, it would be on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow saying that they were raising scare tactics. But we’ll have to see what the New York Times does with this comment tomorrow. The reality is that Joe Biden is telling us that he’s very concerned about something and the only part of it that I can make real logical sense of is he is telling us that if his candidate is elected he can think of five or six scenarios - and he mentions two, the Middle East and Russia - in which his mettle will be tested in a very serious way and in language that almost suggests in a catastrophic way.”
“Well, my answer is then, let’s elect somebody who doesn’t raise that risk,” Giuliani continued. “John McCain is not an unknown quantity; he’s not somebody who’s going to invite an international incident just to test him. There may be international incidents that he’s going to have to deal with that can happen to any president, but certainly John McCain doesn’t raise that risk. And it gets us back to who is better prepared to be Commander-in-Chief of the United States, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama and it seems to me that Joe Biden is telling us in his very convoluted way that he may still believe that John McCain is better prepared to be Commander-in-Chief. But only Joe Biden can explain exactly what he meant by all this.”
“The part that I really don’t understand is that part at the end where he talks about they might not necessarily be right in their response and they’re going to need the support of all of these donors to get them through it,” Giuliani added, fighting to hold back laughter.
“That one totally baffles me. But again it seems to me that if John McCain or Sarah Palin or some surrogate on their behalf said something like this - said something extraordinary like this - they’d have to hold a press conference and explain what kind of sense this makes. Maybe, just maybe, the press will ask Joe Biden to do that. Let’s see.”
You can listen to the entire press conference call here.
