Fox News anchor Sandra Smith quickly jumped in and interrupted Trump campaign spokesperson Hogan Gidley on Thursday when he went on an absolutely off-the-rails tangent about former Vice President Joe Biden and what the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will say in a debate performance.
In recent days, Republicans and conservative pundits have suggested that Biden is looking to skip the presidential debates, focusing largely on a New York Times opinion column that urged the ex-veep to make a couple of demands before debating President Donald Trump.
Interviewing Gidley on Thursday morning’s America’s Newsroom, Smith brought up the Times piece while noting that veteran Democratic strategist James Carville “flipped the script” and claimed that it was Trump who wouldn’t show.
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Gidley, meanwhile, knocked Biden’s Democratic primary debate performances, claiming the former veep came in last in the debate polls and was only saved by his overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primary.
The Trump flack then made a bizarre pivot in an attempt to make the case that Biden would falter in a debate with Trump.
“When you’re on a debate stage, you can’t reach out as he’s done so many times before and say ‘Please, please, bring me my documents, I need to read off of the fact sheet my staff has given me,’” he snarked. “You’re going to hear interesting comments from Biden.”
“About how children love his leg hair and how he coaxed children on his porch with ice cream during quarantines,” Gidley added, prompting Smith to exclaim: “Whoa!”
Continuing down that rabbit hole, Gidley claimed that Biden “doesn’t know the dates of 9/11” before Smith finally cut him off.
“Hold on, Hogan. We’re talking about whether or not the president wants to debate Joe Biden, and whether or not within the Joe Biden camp they’re urging Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump,” she said. “Who benefits the most from a debate?”
The Trump spokesman eventually refocused, saying he believes Trump would “obviously” benefit from the debates because Biden is “waging war on the American way of life.”
As for Gidley’s not-so-subtle innuendos about Biden and children, he is twisting a couple of remarks Biden has made in the recent past to suggest something far more sinister. In a summer 2017 speech, mentioned his blonde curly leg hair while talking about his experience as a white lifeguard at a pool in a predominantly black neighborhood.
Earlier this year, meanwhile, Biden explained how he visited with his grandchildren while respecting social distancing during the pandemic, noting that they would play in the yard while he’d sometimes toss them candy and ice cream from a short distance.
Shortly after Gidley’s Fox News appearance, Biden campaign senior advisor Symone Sanders called the Trump spokesman’s remarks “disgusting” while applauding Smith for “redirecting [these] trashy comments.”
