Joe Biden joked that a potential 2024 endorsement by Taylor Swift is “classified” as he made a rare media appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
Biden’s arrival was apparently a surprise to the audience. He stepped on stage after the announced guest – the comedian and actor Amy Poehler – noted that Biden when vice-president had been a guest on Meyers’s first show. Poehler said she could get him to return, prompting Biden to enter.
“It’s good to be back,” Biden told Meyers. “Why haven’t you invited me earlier?”
Going into this year’s presidential election, Biden is seeking additional ways to reach out to voters, having largely avoided White House press conferences and on-the-record sit-down interviews. Biden also skipped the traditional pre-Super Bowl presidential interview.
Biden has faced criticism as the most media shy president of modern times. Since taking office he has done 86 interviews, compared with 300 by Trump and 422 by Barack Obama at the same point in their presidencies, according to data collected by the nonpartisan White House Transition Project.
During the interview, Meyers quizzed Biden about a conspiracy theory spread among some conservatives that Swift and Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce are part of an elaborate plot to help Democrats win the November election.
“Can you confirm or deny that there is an active conspiracy between you and Miss Swift?” Meyers asked.
“Where are you getting this information, it’s classified,” Biden replied, adding that Swift endorsed him for president in 2020. Meyers followed up to ask if she would endorse Biden again, prompting the president to laughingly add: “I told you it’s classified.”
Biden, who at 81 is the oldest-ever US president, also addressed concerns about his age, saying: “You got to take a look at the other guy, he’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name.”
It was an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, in which the former president praised his wife, Melania, and also referenced “Mercedes” – Mercedes Schlapp, his former aide who helps run the group and was in the audience. Some on social media, as well as Meyers in his monologue, suggested that Trump had used the wrong name for his wife.
Biden added that what truly matters is “how old your ideas are” and proceeded to blast Trump and Republicans for supporting rolling back abortion access and other policies that have been “solid American positions” for decades.
The president also criticised Trump for praising those who participated in the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021, and for pledging to pardon those who assaulted police officers and tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“That’s what happens in eastern European countries,” Biden said. “That’s not what happens in America.”
Meyers has taken frequent jabs at Trump, and devoted much of his show before Biden’s appearance to criticising the former president and Republicans over a court ruling that upended in vitro fertilisation treatment in Alabama.
He also criticised some Democrats who have tried to inoculate Biden from any criticism, playing a clip of senator John Fetterman who said those doing so might as well be supporting Trump.
“Criticising or mocking our leaders is a healthy thing in a democracy,” Meyers said. “I mean, Joe Biden seems to be able to take a joke. We here at Late Night make jokes about him all the time.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
