The White House responded to comments made by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who indicated that because President Joe Biden wasn’t pumping out a steady stream of bullying, obnoxious, false tweets like Donald Trump did, he must not be “in charge.”
Cornyn recently tweeted a quote from a Politico article that said Biden was “not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional.”
The senator added: ”Which Invites the question: is he really in charge?”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki agreed on Monday that Biden’s tweets didn’t compare to those by Trump, who has been permanently banned by Twitter.
“I can confirm that the president of the United States does not spend his time tweeting conspiracy theories,” Psaki told reporters. “He spends his time working on behalf of the American people.”
Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that Cornyn’s tweet may actually have been more sinister than clueless. Blake claimed Cornyn was attempting to push a GOP narrative that Biden was being manipulated by others, including Vice President Kamala Harris. He called Cornyn’s dig a “baseless and ugly bit of innuendo.”
“There is no legitimate reason to believe [Biden] is not making all the kinds of decisions a president usually makes behind closed doors,” Blake wrote. “Biden’s familiarity with the issues is significantly more demonstrated than his predecessor’s was. Trump often seemed unaware of basic policies and key legislative initiatives, and he repeatedly contradicted his own officials. Despite this, Trump’s involvement in making key decisions was never questioned by Republicans like Cornyn.”