It’s been three months since Kamala Harris announced her 2024 campaign for president. She has been joined on the campaign trail by a who’s who of Democratic heavyweights for the expedited race. Noticeably absent for the majority of it? Harris’ current boss and the man she replaced at the top of the Democratic ticket, Joe Biden.
Members of the Harris-Walz team in New Hampshire were reminded why on Tuesday when the president stopped by a campaign office to rally the troops in the Granite State and promptly put his foot in his mouth with a comment about former President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine, hosts of The Morning Meeting on 2Way, to talk about the gaffe and why Biden has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail.
Biden’s Befuddling Comments
With 14 days to go before Election Day, Biden visited a Democratic campaign office in Concord, NH, where he raised eyebrows with his comments about the GOP nominee that his Department of Justice is currently prosecuting.
“If I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up: We gotta lock him up,” the 81 year old said before pausing for about five seconds as those gathered cheered. Perhaps realizing the problem with what he said, Biden then appeared to backtrack. “Politically, lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do,” he added.
The Trump campaign wasted no time accusing the commander in chief of saying the quiet part out loud. “Joe Biden just admitted the truth: he and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy. We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.”
Bad Optics
In Megyn’s view, the gaffe was a reminder of why the Harris campaign has kept its distance from Biden. “Did he go to Arizona or Pennsylvania? Did he go to Michigan? Did he go to Wisconsin – one of those critical ‘Blue Wall’ states,” she asked. “He went – checks notes – to a New Hampshire campaign office by himself and still managed to screw up the news cycle.”
Whether he misspoke or not, Megyn said it is not the right message given the active lawfare against Trump. “[Biden] is, at this moment, trying to lock up Trump,” she explained. “There are two federal prosecutions – one is on appeal after being dismissed by the judge in Florida, and one still has a ways to go in D.C. – so it is not a good look.”
It is also off message. “Interestingly, Kamala Harris has avoided mentioning the lawfare, for the most part, on this latter half of her campaign,” Megyn noted. “I think she realized that it only helped Trump and that the American people do not like it… But apparently Biden did not get the message.”
Halperin said the comment is not becoming of the commander in chief. “Did it ruin her chance of being president? No, but it is not great for the news cycle and, of course, it undermines one of the strongest high horses the Democrats have… which is that they are not using rhetoric the way Republicans are,” he said. “But also as a sitting president, he just shouldn’t be saying stuff like that.”
To that point, the response from pundits on the left has been to turn the situation around on Trump by pointing out that he led chants of “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton during his 2016 campaign. But Spicer said Democrats can’t have it both ways. “Wait a second, if it was wrong for Trump, then you guys can’t claim the mantle now and say, ‘But it’s okay if our guy does it,'” he concluded. “The double standard is unbelievable.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with the guys by tuning in to episode 924 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.