As we went to the weekend, Joe Biden was having a massive fundraiser in New York City where he raised some $25 million alongside former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. And I really was struck by the whole thing.
I said to my team before the show on Thursday how you can see the split-screen here of these three former presidents in Manhattan celebrating themselves and raising money as former President Donald Trump was going to the wake of New York City Police Officer Jonathan Diller who was shot and killed by a repeat offender who was out with no bail and should have been behind bars.
I just couldn’t get over what a missed opportunity it was for the president and how, as a mother, I can’t help it feel I am going to hold it against him.
Political Priorities
Frankly, it got even worse as the day went on because we saw a huge hole in Biden’s schedule that showed he could have gotten out to Long Island during the day and still gone to his fundraiser at night. But then it became clear he was actually using that time to do an interview with the Smartless podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman. He sat down with these celebrities instead of going to the wake. Trump, meanwhile, went to the wake.
Now, I realize everything that politicians do these days is political. Trump surely did not go there purely out of the goodness of his heart. He’s not a dumb politician. He understood the optics. But you know what? He still gets credit for it because he is trying to show his support for law enforcement. He is trying to send a message that this is a priority for him. And Joe Biden sent a very different message.
Trump spoke about what he saw as Biden’s reluctance to go to Officer Diller’s visitation with Fox and Friends‘ Brian Kilmeade:
TRUMP: I think that, politically, he can’t support the police. I think he’s also making a mistake, but I think politically his base won’t let him support the police. And I support the police, I would say, at the highest level of any president by far – maybe double or triple. And they knew that. That’s why when I walked into that funeral parlor, it was like love…
They didn’t even call the family. They could have called. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know even a call would be, perhaps, nice. I’m not sure they’d take his call. Right? I’m really not sure they’d take his call…
That’s right. All Biden had to do was call. I mean, the family did let New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams attend. These are Democrats. The family didn’t try to make it political.
If the sitting president of the United States – nevermind the other two who were with him, Obama and Clinton – said we’d like to pay our respects to Officer Diller, you don’t think the family would have said, ‘Yes, it would be an honor’?
The Bottom Line
So, it was just that Biden didn’t want to be there. That’s the bottom line.
After all, this is the same guy who checked his watch when the bodies came back to Dover Air Force Base after the Abbey Gate attack in Afghanistan. This is the same guy who let his dogs bite two dozen Secret Service agents with really serious wounds and didn’t give a sh-t. This is the same guy who enabled his drug-addled son to go do business for him so he could line his own pockets after his vice presidency and, possibly, during.
This is the same guy, yet you don’t get to hear those ‘fact-checkers‘ at NBC and the like.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 754 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.