They ruin you, your mom, and your dad, particularly when they run for president. That is why, on the all-or-nothing battlefield of campaign politics, one rule has remained sacrosanct: Children are off limits.
But like many other norms in the Trump era, that low level of campaign behavior has also been dismantled and discarded in recent weeks as President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and his top substitutes and allies Profile have begun attacking suspected Democratic opponent Joe Biden with a new weapon: photos of his children and grandchildren.
On Monday, Steve Guest, rapid response director of the Republican National Committee, tweeted an undated photograph, about 40, of Biden and one of his children, then a school-age boy, wearing a hat with the el logo on it. Washington Redskins football team, in an apparent attempt to sink Biden in the wake of the team’s decision to withdraw the name.
“Hi Joe Biden, are you still a Redskins fan?” Guest later wrote responding to criticism for attacking a young boy by declaring that “this is likely to be a picture of Hunter Biden,” whom he called “Biden’s crack-smoking son who was administratively released by the Marina for testing positive for cocaine and who has abused her father’s chosen position to become rich with the Chinese Community Party. “
Young Biden has spoken publicly about his struggles with substance abuse. The latest charge appears to be related to his previous position on the board of a Chinese private equity group, which he resigned in October 2019.
The tweets, since they were removed, were the latest example of the Trump campaign and his allies using images and anecdotes about young members of the Biden family to attack the alleged Democratic candidate for alleged cunning, cunning or, in the case of Redskins photograph, complicity with an offensive team name.
Such memes have long been the currency of extremely anti-Biden online voters who have dubbed the “Creepy Uncle Joe” meme theme. Biden’s campaign, perhaps understandably, did not see a photo of a father holding his son, stolen from his own campaign website, as a body shot.
“Oh no, a photo of @JoeBiden as a loving and caring father, you guys really caught us this time,” spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said in response.
But as the Trump campaign has struggled to define the former vice president with appropriately damaging shorthand, in the manner of “Crooked Hillary” and “Lil ‘Marco,” increasingly toxic memes in that regard have become widespread.
On Thursday, the new Trump campaign spokesman, Hogan Gidley, answered a question about the performance of the debate, accusing Biden of trying to “convince children to come out on the porch with ice cream during the quarantines.”
The anecdote, made to sound like the former vice president was going through the running of the bulls by luring the kids to his gingerbread house, was apparently a reference to comments Biden made during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper in late March, when I was talking about grandparents during the coronavirus. pandemic.
“My deceased son’s children live about a mile as the crow flies from us, and every day, they walk through the woods and through a neighborhood, and they sit in the backyard, and we sit on the porch,” Biden said. at one time, joking that he would “bribe them with ice cream” to pass the time.
Earlier this month, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., liked a post on an Instagram account that called Biden “creepy” for kissing his granddaughter’s head on the day of his father’s funeral, Beau Biden. In May, the young Trump also shared a meme calling Biden a “pedophile,” although he later defended the post.
“The 3 [crying-laughing emoji] in the caption it should indicate to anyone with a hint of common sense that I’m joking, ”Trump Jr. posted, alongside a Biden tetraptic hastily touching young children on his arms, heads and shoulders. “If the media doesn’t want people to make fun and jokes about how creepy Joe is, then maybe he should stop touching him and keep his hands to himself?”
The Trump campaign has not been immune to similar posts: Twitter is lousy with photos of a young Ivanka Trump sitting on her father’s lap at events, but since the first family, Republicans have been quick to condemn them and similar comments about Minor members of the Trump family as beyond paleness.
When Stanford professor Pamela Karlan made a play on words by the name of Barron Trump, the president’s youngest son, during her testimony before the impeachment hearing of the House Judiciary Committee in December 2019, the first lady Melania Trump tweeted that she should be “ashamed” for using a child to get a cheap laugh.
“A young child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics,” the first lady tweeted at the time.
In September 2019, when MSNBC host Mike Brzesinski hinted that Barron Trump was not the president’s biological son, Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared that “there is no excuse for attacking the 13-year-old boy.” years of President Trump. “
Biden’s family, close-knit Irish Catholics who are close to hiding, have often been seen as a rhetorical Achilles heel for the former vice president. When Paul Ryan faced Biden in the 2012 vice presidential debate, many within Obama’s re-election campaign were privately concerned that one side against one of Biden’s sons might derail a successful debate by making him an “angry old man” .
Biden showed a glimpse of that potential anger in December, when an Iowa voter confronted him about Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine, accusing him of “playing” with the autocrats.
“You’re a damn liar, man, that’s not true,” Biden replied, before responding to the man’s concerns about his age challenging him to feats of strength.
In response to questions about Guest’s posts, Michael Ahrens, RNC’s communications director, told The Daily Beast that “we agree with the First Lady that underage children should be off limits.”
But the Biden campaign responded that publications, and others like them, have already revealed the “lack of class” of the Trump campaign.
“The more Donald Trump and his allies complain about the lack of class,” said Andrew Bates, rapid response director for the Biden campaign, “the sharper the contrast between Joe Biden’s character, integrity and compassion becomes. facing his weakness. “
.
