As a speech/language pathologist, I can tell you that being a person with a stutter is hard. I always try to dispel myths about this subject and find that now this is especially important because of the misconceptions so many people have about stuttering in general and about Biden's speech in particular. I know that the republicans have a field day with the way that Biden talks. His speech patterns, however, are typical of people who have worked extremely hard to overcome the life altering disability of disfluency or stuttering. When people stutter, they will often realize they might stutter on an upcoming word and so will talk around that word so that they don't have to say the word that they will stutter on. That can mean that they sound like they have forgotten what they were going to say or that they use  the wrong word, when actually they are just trying to avoid a word that will they will stutter on. In order to have fluent speech, people learn techniques like exhaling some air before they start to say a word, for example. Many of the techniques they learn may make people think they are slow or forgetting what they are saying, but they aren't. They are just trying to cope and to not stutter. These techniques are much like someone wearing glasses when they can't see. They are the tools they have to overcome their disability. In addition, there are things that are very unhelpful for others to do. Numbers 1 and 2 on the list to NOT tell a person who is stuttering  are 1) to "slow down" and 2) to tell a person to "think about what you're saying before you say it". These are not only unhelpful but are also detrimental and actually put more stress on a person, thus actually INCREASING the likelihood of stuttering.

I'm saying all of this so that when you hear people talking about the way Joe Biden talks, more people will be able to counter with the truth, which is that he is a person that stutters and, as such, he is doing what he needs to do to be able to speak fluently. Giving speeches, answering questions, talking on the phone: these are all speaking situations that add more stress and thus increase the probability of stuttering. Instead of ragging on Joe Biden for his speech patterns, praise him for the courage he has shown in overcoming his disability and the role-model he is providing for so many others who live with this debilitating speech difficulty. The techniques he uses are not a measure of his intelligence, they are just techniques to keep him from stuttering. Make sure you let others know this so that the right's nonsense about Biden's speech patterns meaning he has dementia will be recognized for the garbage that it is.