Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that the Republican base is “comfortable” with President Joe Biden because he is an older white man.
Anchor Joy Reid said, “I do feel like Biden has this misunderestimated thing where people assume, ‘Oh, he’s too old. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’ And then he keeps delivering. Today, he tripped over, I guess there was a sandbag, and Twitter and the right are going crazy. It’s the most important thing in the world. First of all, Donald Trump is 76, he’s not exactly young. And you know, it’s the advance team or whoever’s fault that they put a sandbag in front of him. I trip in my own house. What do you think it is about Joe Biden that he is so enraging to the right? Is it because he is so normal? What do you think it is about him that drives them nuts?”
Psaki said, “Well, if you look back, Joy, to 2020, they were trying to figure out how to take him out. They can’t make him extreme. They can’t really make him offensive. I mean, one, he’s a white man who’s older, so you know he is comfortable to many in their base. But I think also they have underestimated him many times. That’s not necessarily a disadvantage to Joe Biden. I mean, it worked for him for a year and a half. He’s always been underestimated. He’s got a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because of that. That can serve you well. But I think they’re just trying to throw a lot of spaghetti up at the wall to try to take him down and so far they haven’t quite figured it out. That’s why when you talk to Republican strategists back in 2020, they would say, ‘We don’t really want it to be Joe Biden ’cause people aren’t freaked out by him.”
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