Vice President Kamala Harris has earned a reputation for creepily snickering at utterly inappropriate moments, but recent events indicate her off-putting tic is rubbing off on her boss. In response to serious questions about sobering circumstances, President Joe Biden has been doing a lot of gleeful giggling lately. The out-of-touch habit casts doubt not only on his cognizance of what’s going on in the country but also on his willingness to provide the transparency and accountability he boasted his administration would exhibit.
Laughing at Political Prosecution
In a video circulated online on Tuesday, Biden can be seen making no attempts to hide his glee after a reporter asked him if the indictment of former President Donald Trump, Biden’s foremost political opponent, is “politically divisive.”
After the president gave no answer, a White House staffer ushered reporters away.
Chuckling at Nashville School Shooting
After a shooter who appears to have identified as transgender shot six people, including three 9-year-old children, at a Christian school in what police confirmed was a “targeted attack,” Biden laughed off a reporter’s queries about whether the attack was a hate crime against Christians.
“Do you believe that Christians were targeted in the Nashville school shooting?” a reporter asked.
“I have no idea,” Biden responded.
“Josh Hawley believes they were,” the reporter noted, referring to the Missouri senator’s demands that the FBI investigate the shooting as a hate crime. “What do you say to that?”
“Well, I probably don’t, then,” Biden retorted before breaking into a grin and chuckling. “No, I’m joking.”
In his first appearance following the shooting, Biden had already opened his remarks with a tone-deaf joke about ice cream.
Snickering at Fentanyl Deaths
After Rebecca Kiessling told Congress about the 2020 deaths of her two sons due to accidental fentanyl poisoning, Biden laughed about it in a speech. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had connected the deaths to Biden’s border crisis, which has caused a drastic uptick in the trafficking of drugs like fentanyl across the border into the United States.
“She [Greene] was very specific recently in saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that fentanyl they took came during the last administration, huh huh,” Biden snickered.
“This is how you speak about the death of my sons? Because a congresswoman misspoke? You mock the loss of my sons? How dare you. What is the matter with you?” Kiessling reacted in a statement.
Giggling at his Classified Documents Scandal
Shortly after Biden’s classified documents scandal — which stretched from his office at a University of Pennsylvania think tank to his Deleware home and garage — became public, Biden smirked and shrugged at reporters trying to ask him questions, while Harris and Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer joined his snickering.
Cracking Up About Inflation
Last year, Biden busted out laughing in response to a joke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner about the rising cost of living.
“Ever since you’ve come into office, things are really looking up. Gas is up, rent is up, food is up, everything,” comedian Trevor Noah quipped, leading Biden to clap his hands together and throw his head back in laughter.
“No, it really has been a tough first year for you, Mr. President,” Noah insisted.
Biden’s weird knack for laughing at the worst moments suggests he might be taking pointers from his veep, whose distinctive cackle became infamous after she nervously laughed off very unfunny things like the southern border crisis, parents struggling to teach their kids during Democrats’ Covid lockdowns, and just about everything else.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
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