It sounded more like a Republican attack ad than a Democratic defense — and way more effective.
When first lady Jill Biden spoke at a weekend fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, in deep blue Massachusetts, she probably hoped a friendly audience would be ready for her story of the struggles of the Biden presidency to date.
What she delivered was a litany of disaster — and proof that even her husband’s harshest critics are right on the money.
“[The President] had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment,” Biden told a group of about two dozen donors at a private home on the island of Nantucket, according to CNN.
Imagine that. A president of the United States having to address the “problems of the moment” rather than indulging in all his hopes and plans.
“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” she said, according to CNN. “Who would have ever thought about what happened [with the Supreme Court overturning] Roe v Wade? Well, maybe we saw it coming, but still we didn’t believe it. The gun violence in this country is absolutely appalling. We didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming.”
That kind of naivete would be unexpected from literally any reasonably informed American.
From the wife of the president of the United States, it’s appalling.
Roe v. Wade has been a cancer on the American political system for half a century. Her own husband helped usher in its prominence in Supreme Court nomination fights when he helped lead the Democratic fight to sink Reagan nominee Robert Bork in 1987.
Do you think the White House was happy to hear about Jill Biden’s speech?
Once now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett was seated to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, most of the country knew a Supreme Court case rooting out Roe was at least possible.
And in the case of the Dobbs decision, thanks to a still-unidentified leaker at the court, Democrats had a two-month head start to prepare for the public announcement. But to hear Jill Biden tell it, she and her husband “still didn’t believe it.”
She, and presumably her husband, thinks gun violence is “appalling”? Where was she while American cities burned in the summer of 2020? Watching “Matlock” with Joe in the basement in Wilmington, Delaware?
And they “didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming”?
Anyone with access to a newspaper or television — much less the combined might of American intelligence services — could see the war in Ukraine coming for literally months before it started.
And the establishment media might not like to remind the American people of it, but Joe Biden was vice president in 2014, the last time Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to dismember part of Ukraine and invade Crimea. (He no doubt received a harshly worded letter from then-Secretary of State John Kerry.) If the Bidens don’t remember that, maybe they remember Hunter getting a lavishly paid sinecure for the Ukraine energy company Burisma the same year.
In other words, the Bidens were uniquely positioned to not only see a war in Ukraine coming, but even to — get this — take steps to avert it. Instead, the president essentially green-lighted the invasion, inviting Putin to take a bite out of his smaller neighbor as long as he could play it off as a “minor incursion.” When the tanks rolled, Putin called it a “special military operation.”
(It’s doubtful the nomenclature mattered much to the Ukrainians whose lives are being destroyed.)
It was unclear from CNN’s report whether Jill Biden got into the rampant domestic problems plaguing the country on her husband’s watch. For an audience in Nantucket, with an average home value of $3.6 million, “inflation” is probably what happens to a yacht sail in a good wind.
But just from the topics CNN covered, the first lady’s speech came across more as a damning indictment of the White House than even a weak defense of it:
Admitting Not Ready for Prime Time!
Jill Biden said at DNC Fundraiser..
“Joe had so many hopes & plans”Apparently the “Malaise Speech” is starting ~
Biden admits a Lame Duck?Joe’s Self Inflicted Crisis
Inflation, U.S. Border, Crime Crisis, Failed Mideast Trip, World Chaos— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) July 18, 2022
This is literally so funny. Can First Lady Jill Biden please explain to my boss that I had so many hopes and plans for things I wanted to do but every time I turned around there was a problem I had to address https://t.co/jVsGOTnsVs
— mx. world (@grantaireisms) July 17, 2022
I have no doubt the President’s job is very challenging, but other president’s had faced tougher challenges and still accomplished things, rather we like the outcome or not. She basically said her husband is unfit to be President.https://t.co/hnwx804Xs9
— Joliet Township Republican Organization (Official) (@TheRealJTRO) July 18, 2022
The Bidens have spent virtually their entire adult lives in the world of politics and raised their family in the same environment. (They also went two for two on adult offspring with drug problems. Do Democrats want to compare that to former President Donald Trump’s accomplished family?)
Unlike most other political couples, they also spent eight years as the second bananas in the Obama administration, which theoretically would give them a cursory exposure to the pressures and responsibilities of the presidency itself. (And probably a hearty dislike of Barack and Michelle Obama.)
Instead, as Jill Biden herself admitted, they were utterly unprepared “for the moment,” and have proven themselves since of being utterly incapable of rising to it.
In other words, the speech proved that the criticisms flung at the Biden White House are true — that it’s ideologically driven in ways to not take into account actual reality; that it’s inept to point of being criminal; and, most important, that it’s incapable of changing or improving until American voters change it themselves (ending Democratic control of Congress with the November midterms would be a good start).
(To be fair, the first lady did not go so far as to prove that her husband is as corrupt as conservatives suspect, but, hey, Hunter’s doing pretty well at that.)
The fact that the speech was covered by CNN, one of the pillars of the legacy media outlets that prostituted their integrity for progressive politics is its own irony. Was CNN expecting the Jill Biden speech to come across as a defense of the disaster that is the Joe Biden presidency?
It was the exact opposite. The sharpest, most vicious brains of the Republican National Committee couldn’t come up with a more effective ad than the first lady’s own pathetic admission:
Joe Biden is doing his best. And this is it.
