In a string of snarks in front of the White House Tuesday, counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway took aim at newly announced presidential candidate Joe Biden.
“You can make a speech, but you don’t have to make sense, apparently,” Conway said of Biden’s first speech as a 2020 presidential contender Monday.
She kept going, interspersing her remarks to reporters with jabs at the former vice president: “Twenty-eight million Americans have no health insurance, none, nine years after Obama and Biden crowed about their health insurance plan. Why is that? Why have the Democrats all moved on from Obamacare into Medicare for All? And in fact, does that include Joe Biden? ”
“Is Joe Biden not endorsing Obamacare the way Obama’s not endorsing Joe Biden? I wonder,” she said before walking away from reporters.
(For what it’s worth, the implementation of Obamacare preceded a dramatic drop in uninsured Americans; the uninsured number began to rise after Trump was elected. And Biden said Monday: “You all should have a choice to buy into a public option plan for Medicare.”)
At one point on Tuesday, Francesca Chambers of the Daily Mail asked Conway what the jabs were about.
“You brought up Joe Biden several times unprompted—”
“How is it unprompted, he’s the frontrunner!” Conway replied, adding sarcastically: “Tell me, what is the problem, Francesca, with the Democratic primary electorate? Are they sexist and racist? Do they not want all these women who are running? All these people of color? Because, apparently, you’ve got the two old, white, straight men, career politicians in the lead, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. You’ve got to go take that up with the Democratic primary electorate.”
She said later: “I know he said that, I asked President Obama not to endorse me. I’m too busy getting the endorsement of the firefighters, but I don’t want a popular President among the Democrats, the first African-American President, to endorse me. Do any of you believe that? You let him get away with his first lie, why’d you do that?”
Conway was much gentler with Sanders, who she described as “a lot like Donald Trump, except for good ideas.”
Sanders, the Trump aide said, “doesn’t care what his party thinks, is connecting directly with people, is raising money in small amounts, and goes out and has very specific points of view, which is why he has a following.”
