Social media users are convinced Biden's stumbles might be evidence of Havana Syndrome.
  • ChihuahuaOfDoom@lemmy.world
    433·
    8 months ago

    Yep, absolutely. It couldn’t possibly be that he’s an octogenarian with a known speech impediment, had to be directed energy weapons.

    • Omega@lemmy.world
      11·
      8 months ago

      Also, allegedly had a cold and probably got flustered after the first time he tripped on his words. And inexplicably kept trying to recite various metrics from memory.

      • corroded@lemmy.world
        16·
        8 months ago

        People really underestimate how bad a cold can be. When I’m sick, it’s so hard to function mentally that I can barely do my job.

        I believe he was sick, and I believe this was just a case of unfortunate timing. What matters in politics is perception, though, and the perception isn’t good.

        • TraipsersWill@lemmy.world
          1·
          8 months ago

          I’ll float the possibility that he took a slug of Nyquil™ before the debate, but forgot to chase it with a Red Bull™.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      187·
      8 months ago

      known speech impediment

      He had a childhood speech impediment. Overcoming those requires a concentrated effort, which we become less able to handle as we age.

      Here’s Biden in 2008

      https://youtu.be/eOombKZSsj4?si=hYe3kh-wkM2iemtY&t=1424

      Here he is in 1987

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRxOldhJ7Sw

      In a way what’s happening now is a speech impediment, but it’s re-emerging as he loses ability in the same parts of the brain that handle critical thinking due to the normal effects of aging.

      I’m just tired of so many people writing this stuff off. Like, it took 2 minutes to find those videos and show he hasn’t always been like this. He just couldn’t win until the only other option was trump. Even tho he was a much better candidate back then.

      Quick edit:

      Ironically something like the Havana weapon would actually cause this shit, it’s incredibly unlikely someone used it on Biden for the debate…

      But it’s fucking 2024 y’all, who knows what’s real anymore I guess.

    • Freefall@lemmy.world
      151·
      8 months ago

      They are not left or right. They are just people that strictly believe everything that has been disproven or is too stupid to bother disproving, as long as ANY thread of correlation can be made up between it and observable reality.

        • Moneo@lemmy.world
          3·
          8 months ago

          Watch Dan Olsen’s video on flat earthers. I’m having a hard time remembering details but the conspiracy theories are more of a symptom than anything. These people are looking for a community as well as an explanation for why the world is so fucked up, and why they are miserable. Anti-semitism and conspiracy theories are more satisfying than anything the left can provide.

  • Rottcodd@lemmy.world
    354·
    8 months ago

    If we’re going to go all conspiratorial, here’s my theory:

    Both campaigns are dealing with old men with diminished faculties.

    There’s some drug cocktail(s) that both campaigns have been using to pep the doddering old farts up for public appearances.

    If you’ll remember, very shortly before the debate, the accusation that “Biden’s on drugs” made the rounds, and Trump made some noises about demanding a drug test.

    For some reason - possibly fear, possibly determination in the face of a challenge, possibly a subtle communication that the Trump campaign had some hard evidence they would, if pushed, release publicly - that led to the Biden team withholding his customary drug cocktail.

    Trump, meanwhile, was dosed to the eyeballs.

    And that was the contrast we saw - Trump was on drugs, while Biden, for whatever reason, for that night alone, was not.

    Remember - for the Republicans broadly and especially for Trump, every accusation is a confession.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    242·
    8 months ago

    “It was his stutter.”

    “He had a cold.”

    “He overprepared and got flustered.”

    “A malicious actor used an Inator on him.”

    I wonder what the next excuse is gonna be.

    • Fuzzy_Red_Panda@lemm.eeEnglish
      153·
      8 months ago

      “He’s old.”

      He actually said on camera that the reason he is running this time is because Trump is running, meaning that if Trump wasn’t running, Biden wouldn’t be running, meaning he doesn’t even really want the job.

      The DNC put up a guy that doesn’t even want to be president again, and now 40% of democrat voters want a new nominee because apparently they weren’t paying attention for the last 4 years and only realized now, during the debate, that Joe Biden is dealing with cognitive decline.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        71·
        8 months ago

        No we realized years ago. It’s the entire reason his campaign started the idea that he’d be a single term president. People brought it up after the midterms when he confirmed he’d run again. It’s been in the news and an open question ever since then. According to insiders, the debate was held early specifically to show he wasn’t too old.

        Biden and the Party have been aggressively going after critics, accusing them of being Trump supporters and disloyal to the very concept of democracy. Which would have worked if he didn’t shit the bed so badly.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        8 months ago

        The DNC basically dragged him out of retirement in 2020 because establishment couldn’t handle anyone scary like Bernie or someone young.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    277·
    8 months ago

    Wow, and here I thought he was an old guy with a stutter getting flustered while a fascist fuckwad spewed inane garbage.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    16·
    8 months ago

    And yet this is still many orders of magnitude more sane than thinking Donald Trump is fit to be president.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    122·
    8 months ago

    While Havana Syndrome is real, to my knowledge it’s not that refined. It should have impacted everyone in the room, Trump and the moderators included.

    The known reports of the syndrome occupied entire floors of buildings. The idea that someone could use it and just target one guy is a little out there.

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
            11·
            8 months ago

            I don’t need to worry about that, but I have standing wagers with several people here on lemmy and elsewhere that Biden both:

            a) wont be the nominee,

            and

            b) wont be the next president.

            So I’d have to pay up? But I’m not worried about that in the slightest at this point (I got a bit excited after his ‘decent’ state of the Union back in March that he might flip on Gaza, but no, he dug his grave further).

            Too many other seats are on the line to run Biden.

            I took several bets where I was able to get anything from 10:1 or 20:1 in a parlay for a) and b) back in April. I’m confident enough now to do even money if there is no time line associated with it (other than obvious ones like the convention). All in all I probably have about a couple hundred on the line right now? Its all on these two outcomes.

            I’ll take 10:1 that Biden isn’t the nominee at the end of this week if you are willing to offer it, and even money that he isn’t the nominee (no timeline) or president. I’m also interested in parlays if you have any you want to propose.

              • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
                11·
                8 months ago

                He has to be capable of winning to be worth supporting.

                In the past 500 days, at no point had Biden demonstrated any evidence that he can win the election. He didn’t campaign as a two term president in 2020, he specifically acknowledged he would only do one term. His polling has been abysmal, almost all of his term, when we know that he already suffers from a 12 point polling deficit on Trump (Biden needs to be beating Trump by 12 to beat him, statistically). His key policies are deeply, the ones that will define him as president, specifically Gaza and the border, are deeply unpopular with the key demographics he needs to win, specifically middle eastern voters in the upper Midwest and any one under 40.

                So this all is, and always has been, on Biden, to do better on. He’s not a candidate that you can support with these outstanding issues because he can’t win an election with them. Supporting him inspire of those issues does nothing to change the fact that he can’t win. Infact, the blue maga blind support (orange man worse, blue no matter who, etc…) has significantly harmed our ability to beat Trump because it prevented any pressure being placed on Biden to become a better candidate.

                Some one needing to earn your vote in a primary season is bigger than just getting your issues addressed. It’s about carving a candidate into someone popular enough to win an election. That’s how Biden won in 2020. He had to go caress and finesse various voting blocks into supporting him by becoming a candidate and having a platform they could get behind. And it worked. He won that election by stepping left and effectively cloning the entire progressive/ Bernie platform.

                Pretending this guy can win is idiotic and doesn’t work. If for whatever reason we still end up with Biden as candidate, we’re going to lose this election. And it’s going to be because of the blue no matter who/ Blue maga crowd if we do lose. It’s an intentional ignorance they’ve maintained about how electoralism and elections work in an effort to shield an unelectable candidate from criticism, and lemmy.world, the news and politics C’s and their associated mods, are particularly rife with it. If we run Biden inspire of his obvious shortcoming which are frankly insurmountable at this point, I put three blame solely in those who made a concerted effort to lie/disguise/ and prevent discussion about his shortcomings as a candidate.

                • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
                  12·
                  8 months ago

                  Blah blah blah, answer the question please. You talk like a politician. Would you support him?