John Cornyn offered a sterling example on Monday of how sometimes, the best tweets are the ones when you don’t hit send. Texas’ senior senator managed an astounding self-own by complaining about President Joe Biden’s relatively low media profile and meager tweeting.
The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters.
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 12, 2021
Imagine having gone through the Trump era and the barrage of angry, nonsensical and often misspelled tweets from the former president, and thinking that it was a sign of serious leadership? Press Secretary Jen Psaki quickly dismissed Cornyn when the subject was brought up at the daily press briefing.
It’s as if the senator was feeling nostalgic for the good old days when Trump would spend all his time rage-tweeting and random attacks on rivals — and even allies and enablers like Cornyn — and making baseless claims about all sorts of topics.
But let us be clear about one thing. Cornyn’s tweets, while being ripe for justifiable ridicule, weren’t just an innocent mishandling of social media. It’s part of a continuing and increasingly desperate attempt by Republicans to find some way to effectively attack President Biden. This was Cornyn’s second tweet about Biden.
Invites the question: is he really in charge?
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 12, 2021
Given the popularity of his first major legislative victory, the American Rescue Plan, it seems the GOP is going to try once again to convince America that Biden isn’t really doing the job he was elected to do.
Aaron Fix writes in The Washington Post today that Cornyn’s tweets were a blatant attempt to paint Biden as some sort of Manchurian Candidate. It’s a ridiculous claim, of course, but it’s really all they’ve got at this point.
“Cornyn’s tweet builds upon a whisper campaign among conservatives that perhaps Biden isn’t actually engaged in doing his job.”
As that same piece points out, there are legitimate reasons why Biden is keeping a noticeably lower profile than his predecessor. For one, he does have a history of foot-in-mouth disease. But beyond that, it seems almost as if he’s fulfilling a campaign promise to return the presidency to a quieter, less bombastic job than what we saw under Trump. Because polls show that, by the time it mercifully came to an end, the majority of the American people were tired of the Trump Show. And Republicans were as annoyed with his incessant tweets as Democrats. This poll from 2017, the first year of his presidency, showed 2/3 of republican voters found his tweeting inappropriate.
If you were advising Biden, telling him to stay off twitter would seem to be the easiest winning PR strategy imaginable. And that’s exactly what he has done. The White House in general has adopted a media policy taking a “less is more” approach.
Is it working? Well, this recent poll shows Biden with a majority approval rating that Trump never came close to in his four years. By letting the results of his administration speak for themselves, and by sticking to his promise of restoring calm to the White House, Biden is winning on several fronts.
It’s driving the GOP nuts, and the increasingly sad and desperate attack strategies by people like John Cornyn only make it more obvious.