Biden’s use of teleprompters draws new attention

But there was a jarring element to the warm gathering of about 30 people: At the front of the room, where the president spoke, were a podium and a teleprompter, two large screens floating about six feet high.

It was a physical manifestation of the kind of accommodations White House officials have made over the past year for an aging president. But while most of the changes were aimed at addressing his physical issues — tennis shoes and shorter walks to Air Force One so he wouldn’t trip, shorter distances to walk so his little step wouldn’t be as pronounced, his wife nearby to help him up the stairs — the teleprompter was the main accommodation to help a president whose speeches can meander and who can seem to lose his train of thought.

For most of his political career, Biden was distinguished by his outspokenness, his identity as an off-the-cuff politician who did little to hide his true thoughts. He considered himself a “gaffe machine,” a trait that endeared him to voters even as it gave his advisers heartburn.

“No one doubts that I mean what I say,” the president often said. “The problem is, sometimes I say everything I mean.”

In recent years, his colleagues have tried to rein him in further, especially since he moved into a position where a small verbal misstep can have global repercussions.

Still, early in his presidency, he remained largely unscripted at fundraisers, when he would address his biggest fans and offer a more nuanced glimpse into the presidential mind. It was in these situations that he revealed his fundraising numbers earlier than his advisers wanted, offered frank assessments of foreign adversaries like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and let slip blunt comments about Donald Trump at a time when he rarely spoke about his predecessor.

But recently, that situation has changed, too, as Joe Biden has replaced the impromptu speaker with a teleprompter. And that hasn’t gone unnoticed by donors, who are increasingly treated not to informal private remarks from the president, but to the same scripted comments he makes in public. And now, some donors are concerned that his advisers are providing these scripts in part to avoid the kind of moments the public saw during the presidential debate, a rare event where Biden couldn’t read his notes and didn’t have the benefit of a teleprompter.

Before news conferences, his aides call reporters to try to figure out what questions they might ask, a practice that wasn’t common in previous presidencies. For some high-profile interview opportunities like the Super Bowl, Biden’s team has simply declined, forgoing an opportunity that most politicians would eagerly seize.

Over the past year, Biden has almost never appeared in public without using the teleprompter. The rare exceptions are news conferences, which have been rare, and media interviews, which he has given more rarely than any recent president, according to the figures.

Biden’s team argues that teleprompters are now a standard piece of equipment for any politician, given the need to juggle endless meetings and responsibilities and the lack of time to rehearse before each appearance.

“It’s not unusual for a president to use a teleprompter. It’s not unusual,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said this week when asked whether the president uses pre-written speeches. “It’s something that presidents have done in the past.”

Biden’s campaign team has said the president does much of his delicate and demanding work behind the scenes without a teleprompter or any other such help.

“The president regularly engages in teleprompter-free negotiations, including contentious and high-stakes negotiations with world leaders and Republican leaders in the House and Senate,” campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said.

“By Republicans’ own accounts at the time, he handled these negotiations more skillfully than was reasonable, using his experience and acumen to avert multiple government shutdowns, deliver aid to Ukraine and stand up to Putin, pass the first bipartisan gun reform in 30 years, and finally provide much-needed funding for our country’s crumbling infrastructure,” she added.

A teleprompter can only do so much, and Biden is still capable of deviating from it, sometimes making comments that stray from the official line of his own White House. For example, he declared that Putin “cannot stay in power” at the end of a speech in Poland, forcing his advisers to clarify that U.S. policy had not changed to include regime change in Moscow.

Biden’s use of teleprompters has become increasingly problematic, some aides and donors say, at big-ticket fundraisers, where supporters pay thousands of dollars for a private audience with the president, often in an intimate setting. The campaign has drawn a wave of concern, particularly after an April fundraiser in Chicago at the home of Michael Sacks, a major Democratic donor.

Biden spoke for only 14 minutes, took no questions and left, frustrating donors who wanted more opportunities to engage with the president, according to people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. Even with the teleprompter, Biden struggled to speak, and some donors said they had trouble hearing him. After the event, several donors in attendance griped to campaign officials about Biden using a teleprompter in an intimate space like the Sacks’ living room.

Biden himself often worries about not being prepared, advisers and associates say. The president, who overcame a childhood stutter that still resurfaces from time to time, spends a lot of time preparing speeches and, particularly during his campaign four years ago, he would say, “A president’s words matter.” He hones his sentences and is wary of making mistakes. And, in what may be a lingering effect of the 1988 presidential campaign that was derailed by accusations of plagiarism, he now sometimes attributes even mundane phrases to other sources.

“As the old adage goes, ‘Give me a break,’” he said during his campaign in August 2020.

But Biden has resisted staying on track throughout his career, and the teleprompters have been a way for his exasperated aides to try to keep him on track.

When he was vice president, the military officers manning the machine often struggled to keep up, as Biden frequently deviated from the text he was supposed to read. Once, the teleprompter unexpectedly restarted near the end of a speech, forcing Biden to improvise while his speechwriter at the time, Dylan Loewe, frantically retyped the ending in real time.

“When it was over, I thought he would be angry,” Loewe said in a previous interview. “But he came over to greet me and said, ‘That was the most fun day of my life.’”

“Some of his worst moments have happened when he’s gone off script,” he added. “But most of his best moments have happened that way, too.”

In addition to the teleprompter, donors are also frustrated by Biden’s refusal to take questions at his fundraisers.

A business executive who hosted a fundraiser last year said some donors backed out, refusing to donate or attend the fundraiser after being told they couldn’t ask questions. Many of them had written large checks for $100,000 or more. The executive said that when they helped raise money for Biden in 2020, it was clear he was “fragile,” but he was lively and charming and “seemed healthy.”

“The donors I talk to are depressed,” said the person, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. “It’s a complete disaster. Everyone knew he wasn’t as sharp as he used to be, but the debate has really shocked people.”

Since the debate, Biden and his team have tried to reassure Democrats that his performance last week was an aberration. But his appearances at several fundraisers in recent days have done little to reassure them.

“What upset people was that they waited three hours and he spoke for eight minutes,” said one donor who attended a fundraiser in East Hampton, N.Y., on Saturday. “He was a teleprompter. No questions. He was gone. They were disappointed by the brevity of his remarks, the lack of interaction with the crowd, the fact that he didn’t take any questions.”

The donor said he had probably attended 10 or 15 fundraisers with Biden in the past, and that the “problem in the past was you couldn’t get him to stop answering questions. He stayed forever. He never left. He stood in line and shook every hand, he wanted to answer more questions than the audience had.”

On Tuesday, after months of using a teleprompter and as criticism mounted, Biden’s advisers finally decided he would go without one. When he showed up at a living room in McLean, Virginia, he stood in front of a large fireplace and spoke to several dozen people.

He came up with a new line, suggesting that his busy schedule and overseas travel were the reason for his poor debate performance, and added a shocker. “I came back and almost fell asleep on stage,” Biden said, drawing some laughs.

But he was also soft-spoken at times, with several lines hard to hear from the back of the room. After about six minutes, he finished, before singer Renée Fleming came on to perform a song made famous by singer Ella Fitzgerald, “All the Things You Are.”