A comprehensive review of official White House transcripts reveals a staggering trend: the White House communications staff has issued corrections to President Joe Biden’s public remarks at least 148 times since the start of 2024. The analysis, conducted by the Daily Caller, highlights a consistent pattern of alterations to bring Biden’s statements in line with official White House policy or factual accuracy.
Spanning 118 statements, speeches, and interactions with reporters from January 1 to April 24, the official transcripts have been subject to numerous revisions. Corrections range from minor adjustments to significant alterations, including changes to names, dates, organizational titles, and even the meaning of the president’s statements.
In some instances, the White House has had to modify transcripts to convey the opposite of what Biden originally said. Examples include adding qualifiers such as “[Republican]” to clarify context or altering verbs to change the intended message.
Notably, the White House occasionally released transcripts that misrepresented what Biden actually said, requiring subsequent corrections. One such instance involved Biden reading the word “pause” from a teleprompter, which initially appeared as “(inaudible)” in the transcript.
Furthermore, Biden’s remarks have sometimes included false information or inaccurate data, prompting corrections by the White House. These corrections range from factual inaccuracies regarding COVID-19 vaccination numbers to misrepresentations of personal anecdotes.
Even grammatical errors or verbal omissions by Biden have necessitated revisions to ensure the accuracy of the transcripts. For instance, the transcript corrected Biden’s omission of the word “woman” in reference to the first Black Supreme Court justice.
In addition to textual revisions, the White House has corrected Biden’s mispronunciations and linguistic errors. Biden’s confusion of pronouns and healthcare terminology has led to corrections in the transcripts.
A comparison with former President Donald Trump’s transcripts reveals a stark contrast in correction frequency and nature. While Trump’s transcripts occasionally required minor adjustments for mispronunciations, Biden’s revisions often involve substantive changes to content and context. In a few cases, the transcripts from Biden’s statements were plain unintelligible before the updated revisions.
Despite the extensive revisions documented by the Daily Caller, the analysis does not encompass instances where the White House altered transcripts without indicating changes. Therefore, the real number of gaffes may be far higher than reported. Nonetheless, the staggering number of revisions issued by the White House raises pressing concerns about Biden’s cognitive health, which many have called into question due to the president’s age.
In one notable incident during Biden’s State of the Union address, he misstated the name of a young woman allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant, calling her “Lincoln” instead of “Laken.” The transcript initially reflected “Lanken” but was corrected to “Laken.”