After Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night, ABC tossed back to set. Chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl was already out of breath, ready to make sexy time, as his colleague Borat Sagdiev would say.
“This is probably the largest, if not one of the largest audiences President Biden will have before the election come November,” Karl began. No shit. Because they can’t risk letting him campaign before then. “Now our chief White House correspondent, Mary Bruce… I’m curious what you’re hearing from your sources. Did he do what they wanted them to do?”
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This is what Mary Bruce said:
“I can tell you the White House is very happy right now. I bet there are a lot of high fives going on right now…. The White House feels that he nailed this, that he put his critics on their heels at every turn… I think the overarching message coming out of this speech was really, game on… And the tone of it was just so classic Biden! It wasn’t polished, lofty rhetoric. It was folksy, it was personal. He was funny at times… He repeatedly put Republicans on notice. He sparred with them in the room in a way I don’t think we’ve ever seen before…”
The White House feels he nailed this? Real talk, if the job is to instantly relay the White House’s opinion on the White House’s speech, why do we need ABC? Why not cut right to a levitating Jake Sullivan head declaring, “PEOPLE OF EARTH! YOU ARE ENTHRALLED!” At least MSNBC has the sense to just cut out the middleman and hire Jen Psaki. Sorry: MSNBC had two former White House communications directors on to give reaction instructions.
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“He started with World War II. And the Civil War. And rooted the threat facing our nation from ‘my predecessor’ in those two epic battles,” gushed former George W. Bush mouthpiece Nicolle Wallace. “Then he quoted Ronald Reagan. It was like a punch in the face to every Republican in the room… A punch in the nose! It’s why by the end, Lindsey Graham slouched in his seat, arms folded, like it was John McCain up there.” Like it was John McCain up there? Huh? Who’s that meant to impress?
“I’ve been a part of, I don’t know, maybe nine or ten of these…” explained Biden spokesperson Psaki. “They almost always start on the economy because that’s what you’re trying to speak to your audience about, people who are sitting at home, and it’s rare for it to start on something else.”
Translation: We usually start with the economy because that’s what voters care about. But I’m about to praise him for doing the opposite. Psaki went on. “This was… democracy, intertwined with kind of the power and speaking against authoritarian dictators like Putin. That’s a choice and that’s a choice the president makes. It’s not like they just give him a speech and he says, ‘Sounds great. I’ll deliver this.’ He made the choice to bookend this on democracy.”
