Joe Biden laughed — and that was a mistake on the optics. The President laughed because the accusation hurled at him by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — that Biden was personally responsible for the overdose deaths of two young men whose mother was grieving their loss — wasn’t factual.
“Isn’t she amazing?” Biden asked about Greene. “She was very specific recently about a mom who lost two kids to fentanyl, that I killed her sons,” Biden continued. “Well the interesting thing is that that fentanyl they took came during the last administration.”
“Isn’t she amazing?” President Biden throws shade at Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Video: C-SPAN) pic.twitter.com/SZLKihUIjG
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) March 2, 2023
Biden then chuckled slightly, at the illegitimacy of Green’s accusation. But those looking to criticize Biden portray his chuckle another way, as an insensitive laugh at the tragic death of two American boys, rather than at the absurdity of having to shoulder blame for what didn’t happen on his watch.
In politics, there is the detailed reality of a situation and then there is how the situation looks — the so-called optics. Politicians can look wrong in the optics even if they’re right on the facts, as Biden does here.
A mistake on the optics, as Biden just made, is a real political mistake because the opposition will emphasize it and try to dictate the narrative. Some media outlets are doing that now, painting Biden as insensitive to the plight of fentanyl victims. With his chuckle, Biden gave them the opportunity. Greene’s unrelenting accusations forced Biden into the mistake.
Note: Greene has had success with this strategy — her relentless hounding of Biden for perceived slights to her base gets a lot of attention. Greene has spent weeks hitting Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hard over what she characterizes as their neglect of the Ohio toxic train derailment victims. The optics look bad as she lays them out, even though Ohio’s Republican Governor said publicly that he was getting all the help he needed from the federal government in the wake of the accident.
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