Days after President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign turned a rant about him by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene into a massively viral online advertisement, Mr Biden is leaning into the GOP congresswoman’s description of him as continuing the work of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programmes.
Mr Biden brought up Ms Greene’s inadvertently flattering remarks during a speech in Philadelphia on Thursday meant to highlight how his administration is pumping funds into infrastructure projects across the country and creating clean energy jobs.
“As you may have seen — apparently 40 million people watched — Marjorie Taylor Greene, the very conservative gentlelady from the state of Georgia, said, ‘Biden is doing things like Roosevelt,’” he said.
Mr Biden drew laughs from the crowd who had gathered to hear him after quipping that he’d “never had an endorsement from her before”.
The president’s remark about Ms Greene was a reference to a 16 July speech she delivered to the Turning Point Action conference in Palm Beach, Florida.
Ms Greene had told the crowd of right-wing activists that Mr Biden was working to complete the work that Roosevelt had begun with the New Deal in the 1930s, and that Johnson “expanded on” with the Great Society’s addition of programmes such as Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start to the roster of American social services.
“Programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions, and he still is working on it,” she said.
The White House immediately pounced on Ms Greene’s flattering description of Mr Biden’s efforts, writing on Twitter: “Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families”.
Mr Biden’s campaign followed up by using her words to narrate a campaign ad replete with images of Mr Biden and an added line in which he said he approved the message.
