Ex-WH Chief of Staff: Trump Was More Focused at 1 AM Than Biden Is at 1 PM
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff for former President Donald Trump’s final 10 months in office, nailed President Joe Biden on Tuesday over Biden’s lack of stamina, focus and energy.
Compared to any former president, Biden is lacking in all of those departments. He’s also dogged by constant speculation that he’s suffering from cognitive decline.
The president does himself few favors when it comes to quelling talk that he might not be playing with a full deck of cards. Biden can’t or won’t speak to a media that’s itching to heap praise on him, he can’t remember important names or dates, he’s early to bed nightly and, per reports, he has Vice President Kamala Harris now taking phone calls from world leaders.
Compared to Trump, the 78-year-old doesn’t even come close with regard to energy.
According to Meadows, who worked alongside Trump in the White House for nearly a year as one of his top aides, Trump had more vigor in the middle of the night than Biden can muster after lunch. Appearing on Fox News anchor Sean Hannity’s program Tuesday, Meadows weighed in on Biden’s low-energy presidency in a conversation with the host and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Jordan ripped Biden’s lackluster first 49 days in office, during which he failed to hold a formal news conference or deliver remarks to a joint session of Congress. The congressman also poked fun at a story from Tuesday about how Biden’s dog, Major, reportedly bit a member of White House security.
“Today, we heard about Biden’s dog biting someone. Can you imagine if President Trump had a dog at the White House and it bit someone, the press would go crazy. They would say, ‘This dog is working with Russia and we gotta have an investigation,’” Jordan said.
The Ohioan added that “the American people deserve to know who is making the decisions,” adding that “they’re also sick and tired of the double standard they see every single day from the mainstream press.”
Meadows, who has more authority than most to speak about the habits of the former president, then cut in and offered some insight about Trump and how hard the former president fought day and night for the country.
Meadows only needed a few sentences to summarize the stark contrast between the Trump and Biden administrations.
“Jim’s absolutely right,” Meadows said. “President Trump was more focused at 1 a.m. in the morning than Joe Biden is in the afternoon at 1 p.m.”
“I mean, you start to look at this and you say, at what point are we going to start to have real communication from the White House?” Meadows asked.
Jordan then joked that all three men used to hear from Trump in late-night phone calls while he was in office.
The segment was light, but it offered some real insight into where the country is at from a leadership standpoint — compared to where it was up until Jan. 20.
Trump was known for getting very little sleep, and for having the schedule and stamina of a man decades his junior. Biden, meanwhile, often appears agitated even in the daytime, and his Mr. Magoo routine is both stale and terrifying.
That 2008 “3 a.m. phone call” ad from failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton really comes to mind when thinking of Biden’s lack of presence and leadership. The infamous ad inferred that at all times, even at 3 a.m., when “your children are safe and asleep,” a phone at the White House is liable to ring with an emergent situation on the other line.
“Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers the call. … It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” the ad’s narrator said.
Though it was mocked relentlessly, the ad was meant to portray Clinton as fit to lead and willing to work around the clock. She failed to get herself to that phone, whereas Biden is presumably sitting right next to it now on a nightly basis. The ad, or at least the sentiment behind it, is no longer funny.
You get the feeling that if such a telephone were to ring, Biden wouldn’t even know what to say to whoever might be on the other line.
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