Viral social media posts claim that President Joe Biden called a journalist “a stupid son of a bitch.”
The claims are accurate: At a White House event Monday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Biden if he thought “inflation is a political liability in the midterms.” Biden was caught on camera replying, “It's a great asset, more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.”
Doocy appeared on Fox News later that evening and said that Biden had called him to apologize and “cleared the air.”
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Net-net this is a positive for Biden.
First, he showed some emotion when it came to inflation--he's as pissed about inflation as many Americans are, etc. etc.
Second, he got to demonstrate how absolutely opposite he is to the previous guy, and ironically this whole episode represents a return to normalcy because he apologized and called the (obviously hostile) member of the press to say so.
Third, he created another device to show just how absurdly shameless Republicans can be as so many of them are feigning outrage over this to score political points even though it's obvious that there's nothing in their value system that finds anything wrong with this (e.g. for Democrats it was a bug and for Republicans it's a feature).
I’m not going to pretend I’m deeply offended by this. I quite honestly couldn’t give a damn about it. Doocy seems to be following the Acosta playbook, so it’s probably well-deserved in the context of a journalist just being a partisan hack.
But, just from a punditry perspective - not a good look for a guy who ran on restoring norms and decency. He looks flustered and frustrated.