“They got a new sheriff in town,” Biden told workers at the Mack Truck Lehigh Valley operations facility after his tour on Wednesday. He said the new rules he is putting in place – that any product purchased by the federal government must have 60% of the value of its component parts manufactured in the United States – will bring back factory jobs. Biden was in friendly territory. He won Lehigh County (Pennsylvania) in 2020 and is hoping to keep their support as the mid-terms approach.

The current threshold is 55% manufactured parts in federal government purchases so Biden’s bump up to 60% is not much of a tweak. His proposal does gradually increase the requirement to 75% by 2029. He is trying to appeal to blue-collar workers who have dealt with layoffs in recent years. He likely also remembers (maybe) that Trump won in 2016 thanks to blue-collar worker support and his support of American manufacturing. Perhaps Biden forgot that Trump’s America First philosophy included bringing manufacturing jobs back to America that had been outsourced overseas during the Obama-Biden administration, as well as previous administrations.

Biden looked slightly dazed and generally confused in the video clips I watched of his visit to the Mack Truck factory. His small talk to workers was forced and awkward. One comment, in particular, captured the attention of some observers. Biden claimed to have driven 18-wheeler trucks in his earlier life. Remember, this guy has been in elected office and a professional politician for almost fifty years. He went to Washington, D.C. as a U.S. senator at the age of 29. When did he drive a big rig? When asked, the White House had to scramble to provide cover for Biden’s latest whopper.

Joe Biden, a career politician who has been in politics for 48 years, claims he "used to drive an 18 wheeler.” pic.twitter.com/eOXI9pwF2g

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 28, 2021

There is scant evidence that Biden has ever driven an 18-wheeler truck.

When asked if the president had ever driven such a truck, a White House spokesperson pointed to a December 1973 article from the Wilmington Evening Journal that showed Biden rode in an 18-wheeler on a 536-mile haul to Ohio.

Fox News pressed the spokesperson about the president’s claim – noting that riding in a truck is not the same as driving one – at which point the president’s spokesperson pointed to a United Federation of Teachers post that touched on Biden driving a school bus in the past as a summer job.

Riding in an 18-wheeler? I might buy that. That’s not the same as driving one, though. And, a school bus isn’t an 18-wheel truck. According to SchoolBusFleet.com, school buses “have two axles, with the bigger models having two wheels on the front axle and four wheels on the dual axle, for a total of six wheels.”

In the grand scheme of things, this kind of random boast isn’t a big deal. It’s just another claim made by a confused old man to let others around him think he’s one of them. More disturbing is to watch his face register confusion so frequently when he is performing normal tasks or to hear him try to answer a question and gobbly-gook comes out of his mouth.

Biden was promoting his infrastructure legislation now in the Senate. Senator Toomey offered a suggestion that instead of raising taxes as the infrastructure bill does, Biden should use unspent money from his $1.9T coronavirus relief package to cover infrastructure investments. “Hopefully, he will use his visit to learn about the real, physical infrastructure needs of Pennsylvanians — and the huge sums of unused ‘COVID’ funds which should pay for that infrastructure,” Toomey said in a statement.

Sheriff Joe never met a tax increase he didn’t support, though, so Toomey’s common sense suggestion – use the money that hasn’t been spent yet instead of raising taxes on the blue-collar workers he’s trying to win over – likely will fall on deaf ears.

There were more awkward moments at the Mack Truck factory. Biden asked if he could open the door of a truck cab and a worker had to tell him that he didn’t have the key to it. Sorry, Joe, no photo op behind the wheel of a Mack Truck. During his speech to the union workers, he said there were three reasons he ran for president. He only named two reasons.

Joe Biden says he ran for president for three reasons, forgets to name the third one. pic.twitter.com/vlqYoBMbB7

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 28, 2021

While he was explaining that he was put in charge of Obama’s economic recovery, some Trump derangement appeared.

Joe Biden confuses Trump and Obama, says it was a “Freudian slip.” pic.twitter.com/7xyTjDm4QW

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 28, 2021

Blue-collar workers have drifted to Republican candidates in recent elections, especially since 2016 and Trump’s appeal to them. Will workers fall for Biden’s build-back better slogan? If his success in keeping that pledge is the same as his success in reviving the economy after the 2008 financial crash, there is little to be optimistic about. Biden brags that Obama put him in charge of the country’s economic recovery after they took office but we remember that the Obama administration’s economic recovery was the slowest since the Great Depression. It wasn’t a rising recovery, it was a stagnate one. Biden is not capable of reaching the historic success Trump had with the economy for all groups of Americans because of his policies.

These field trips to promote his infrastructure plans or to encourage people to get vaccinated usually produce noteworthy gaffes or statements. It’s not because Biden isn’t an experienced politician, he’s done nothing else. It’s constant proof of his failing mental capacity. It’s startling to watch. Even his overly attentive handlers had a hard time explaining his performance in Pennsylvania.