Joe Biden wanted to tell America about what he would do to combat coronavirus on Friday evening, but first, he and his staff had to figure out how to use the computer video program.
After a “virtual” town hall tech disaster that included a wailing baby, looping feedback, the candidate partially walking off camera, and a frustrated sign-off, the campaign emailed viewers to admit failure.
“Tonight, you tuned in to our first ever virtual town hall. And unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties. That’s our bad,” Team Joe wrote.
“We’re working every day to make this campaign better. And in this new era, we are experimenting with new technology. We promise to do better next time.”
The campaign also posted an “edited” version, because it had “technical issues which delayed its start and led to unclear audio.”
The event started 19 minutes late and immediately went off the rails as Biden appeared to be talking, but there was no audio. He stopped, and after a brief pause, resumed his remarks, but his audio was feeding through multiple computers, which created a feedback loop.
The campaign eventually fixed the audio issue, which resulted in Biden no longer appearing on camera.
As the campaign turned to questions, the first woman made a statement, instead: “Mr. Biden’s speech was garbled the entire time.” The moderator promptly moved onto another person.
Twenty-four minutes after it started, a frustrated Biden said, “I’m sorry this is such a disjointed effort here,” and signed off.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleOlson4.