Fox & Friends on Tuesday wasn’t amused by Joe Biden’s birthday joke. (Watch the video below.)
A day earlier, the president posed with a cake that appeared almost on fire as he celebrated his 81st birthday.
“Thanks for the birthday well-wishes today, everyone,” he wrote on social media. “Turns out on your 146th birthday, you run out of space for candles!”
“Such a weird thing to say,” host Ainsley Earhardt sniffed on Fox News.
“He’s making fun of it, and it’s a real issue for the American public right now,” her colleague Lawrence Jones said.
It’s called sarcasm, people. But then again, the name of the show isn’t Fox & Friends & Sense of Humour.
Fast-forward to 10:40:
The Fox News morning crew then dove into the reported Bubble Wrap strategy to protect the president, which was noted by The New York Times. Politico reported that handlers have discussed having Biden walk shorter distances on camera in more comfortable shoes.
But current and past administration officials also reportedly said that the president should be out campaigning more to, as the Times wrote, “show his vigour, deploy more humour to defuse the matter and even boast about his age rather than ignore it”.
It probably takes more than birthday levity to overcome a staggering 71% of voters who believe he is too old to be an effective president, as a Times poll found. But it can’t hurt.