Joe Biden is a man who likes his ice cream and routinely needs the White House to clean up his messes. He could be in diapers at this point, too. Who knows? If he is, I’m sure the White House is doing everything possible to keep that under wraps.
But I digress. According to a new book by Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic, Joe Biden feels like his White House staff is babying him, and he’s not particularly happy about it.
The book recalls the incident where Biden riffed after the conclusion of a speech about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, making a statement that appeared to call for Putin to be overthrown. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said. According to Foer’s account, the White House was walking back the statement by the time Biden had reached his motorcade.
“Suddenly, the press wasn’t marveling at his rhetoric or his diplomatic triumphs; it was back to describing him as a blowhard lacking in self-control,” Foer writes in his book, and Biden was deeply upset over the media coverage of the gaffe and “left for home, ending his triumphalist tour, feeling sorry for himself.” The president “resented his aides for creating the impression that they had cleaned up his mess.”
“Rather than owning his failure, he fumed to his friends about how he was treated like a toddler,” Foer writes.
Naturally, the White House disputed this story when Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked about it.
“President Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. Why does White House staff treat him like a baby?” Doocy asked.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre might have needed a diaper of her own when she got that question, as she was none too pleased by it.
“No one treats the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, like a baby,” she insisted before adding that it was “a ridiculous claim.”
Doocy then quoted the book and asked, “Was John [F.] Kennedy ever babied like that?”
“So, look, I’ll say this,” she began. “There’s going to be a range — always — a range of books that are — about every administration, as you know — that’s going to have a variety of claims. That is not unusual. That happens all the time. And we’re not going to litigate those here. That’s something that we’re not going to speak to.”
PETER DOOCY: "Why does White House staff treat [Biden] like a baby?"
JEAN-PIERRE: "No one treats the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, like a baby. That's ridiculous. That's a ridiculous claim." pic.twitter.com/J3T4nXUaSZ
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 5, 2023
Cute story. I wonder if Jean-Pierre would dismiss all the outlandish claims made about Trump in various books the same way.
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