OPINION:
Being the first lady of the United States is not a tough job. Pick a chichi issue — not too tough — go to ribbon cuttings, tree plantings, a funeral or two, and just smile a lot.
But that’s not for Jill Biden. The former school teacher (who never misses an opportunity to announce she’s a former school teacher) is a shrewd wife of a craven politician, so, two peas in a pod.
And she must of late be stressing over her husband’s glaringly disastrous presidency. This past weekend, she popped up to Nantucket (for free, of course; nice work if you can get it) to deliver a speech for the Democratic National Committee at a couple’s multimillion-dollar mansion.
What she said there was truly remarkable not only for its lack of accountability but for its sheer anger and visceral disgust with half of America.
Mrs. Biden said that voters elected her husband in 2020 because Republicans are evil.
“I think they chose him, at least in my mind, maybe yours as well, because it was a choice between good and evil,” she said to the top 1% gathered on the back patio.
Let that sink in a second. America’s first lady thinks the 74,225,845 Americans who voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2020 are “evil.”
She reiterated the notion later in her speech to make sure everyone got the message: Republicans are evil — they don’t just have a different approach and, maybe, love their children just as much as Democrats love theirs. No, no, no, they’re evil.
“I know there are so many naysayers who say we’ll get slammed in the midterms. OK. The Republicans are working hard, they stick together, for good or evil. So, we just have to work harder,” she said.
Then, to the millionaires on the patio, Mrs. Biden went on a rant about how hard everything has been for her husband, blaming anything — and everything — but her man.
“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” she said. “Who would have ever thought about what happened with 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.”
Really? Because, uh, everyone else did. And President Biden, the supposed foreign policy expert, actually spent weeks warning that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, although he didn’t do a thing about it.
President Harry S. Truman famously put a sign on his desk that said, “The Buck Stops Here,” but for Mr. Biden, well, it’s never his fault, Mrs. Biden said.
“He 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,” she said.
Of course, as the Bidens do, she got everything back to herself, talking about her eight years living off the American taxpayer as the wife of the vice president.
“I was saying to myself, ‘OK, I was second lady. I worked on community colleges. I worked on military families. I’ve worked on cancer. They were supposed to be my areas of focus. But then when we got [in the White House], I had to be, with all that was happening, first lady of the moment.”
Then it was more me, me, me.
“If you think of what happened in Waukesha, where people were just mowed down. People were a little hesitant about the first lady going there. Was it for politics? But then I got there and started talking to people and we are all just Americans.”
Well, not Republicans. They’re evil.
“I think we’ve been so divided for so long that we’re afraid to reach out a little bit to people who don’t believe the same things we believe,” she said. Wait, what? You just called half of America evil. Is that what you call reaching out?
In a tin-ear twist, she didn’t bother talking about the plight of the American people — the middle class who have been hit hard by soaring inflation, sky-high gas prices and ever-climbing interest rates. No, it was all about how Mr. and Mrs. Biden have been victims of happenstance.
Of course, Mr. Biden comes from the Senate, where members do little more than talk. And he’s been on the government teat for like 50 years, so he truly has no idea what it’s like to have a real job.
But here is the oddest thing about her speech: She never got to the good part, never said, “Hey, it’s been tough, but Joe has a plan and we’re gonna fix all this.” Mrs. Biden said everything would be great — her husband would be doing fantastic — if not for those pesky “challenges.”
She actually said her husband had “so many hopes and plans” — not has, but “had.” Eighteen months in, he’s throwing in the towel; it’s all too tough!
Democrats will get crushed in the November midterms, and top members of the party are already queueing up to run in 2024.
The question is, will there still be a country in 2024?
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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