Biden’s Remark at Hanoi Press Conference: ‘Time for Me to Retire for the Night’

In a series of non sequiturs and tangents that grew increasingly bizarre toward the tail end of a global press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, which had been scheduled to cap off the G20 summit in New Delhi, President Joe Biden made the pronouncement that he’s “going to go to bed.” Moments later, press aides called an end to the conference, seemingly in an effort to usher him off stage.

It was unclear — between Biden’s tiring demeanor or, according to Mediaite, his response to a question about the U.S. placing strategic interests above human rights — what drove White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to close out the presser.

After speaking about for 20 minutes in a series of tangents featuring mentions of “John Wayne,” “cowboys,” “Indians,” “dog-face pony soldiers,” or in bizarre comments such as “even more frightening than a- than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20 [to] 10 years,” Biden at the end of the press conference proclaimed, “But I tell you what, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”

Moments later, the president was asked what his thoughts were about Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who attended the G20 summit on Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s behalf.

Biden responded saying: “We talked about what we talked about at the conference overall. We talked about stability. We talked about making sure that the Third World — the — excuse me — ‘Third World’ — the — the — the Southern Hemisphere had access to change, it had access — We — it wasn’t confrontational at all. He came up to me. He said (inaudible) —”

Just then, Jean-Pierre cut off Biden, speaking over the speaker system, “Thank — thank you, everybody.”

“Thank —” Biden responded, seemingly confused.