Can you imagine Joe Biden playing chess? Could he beat, say, an average seventh-grader? C'mon, man: I'm serious! Not a joke!
But on MSNBC's Saturday edition of The Weekend, co-anchor Alicia Menendez claimed that whereas Biden is playing chess, Donald Trump is -- at best -- playing Hungry Hungry Hippos [billed as a game for "preschoolers."] The daughter of Sen. Bob "Gold Bars" Menendez should describe what game he was playing. She's not in the right place to swagger.
Co-host Symone Sanders Townsend chimed in to suggest that the better game analogy for Trump might be the card game Uno.
The comments came in the context of Biden's participation in various recent events, including the G7 summit. Sanders-Townsend suggested that Biden's performance counters any notion that he might be "a little too old."
Whuh? Surely Sanders and the rest of the panel have seen this video from the G7 of a dazed and confused Biden doddering away until Italian PM Giorgia Meloni gently rescues him.
Chess? It was more like Weekends at the Memory Care Wing.
Reed Galen, co-founder of the disgraced Lincoln Project, chipped in to claim, using a favorite liberal phrase, that Biden has always "met the moment" during his presidency. Moments like the disgraceful Afghanistan withdrawal, and the porous southern border?
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Weekend
6/15/24
8:14 am EDTMICHAEL STEELE: President Biden is back in the United States after attending the G7 summit in Italy. The group announced $50 billion in new financing for Ukraine from frozen Russian assets. The White House said the United States will work with the country and the G7 leaders to finalize details of the loan in the coming months. It will provide money for Ukraine's military and reconstruction by the end of the year. And just this morning, Vice President Kamala Harris announced the U.S. will provide an additional $1.5 billion tobolster Ukraine's energy sector and humanitarian needs.
Joining us now is Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and MSNBC contributor Eugene Daniels, a White House correspondent for Politico.
Reed Galen, Eugene Daniels, welcome to you both. So this is, I said this was a great week for the president. He's having these back-to-back weeks both the national stage and domestically the economy, the numbers were strong, coming out on inflation.
. . .ALICIA MENENDEZ: It's amazing, because you think about the fact the president is playing chess, and the former president, at best, is playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos.
SYMONE SANDERS-TOWNSEND: Yeah, if that. Maybe Uno. I'm going to give him Uno, maybe. He's playing Uno, and somebody keeps telling him, drop four. [Laughter on set.]
You know, the split screen this week, much like the split screen last week. We keep talking about the split screens that have happened. And again, for everyone that's saying, you know, oh, Joe Biden seems a little too old. I don't know about you, but from France, doing all these things, coming back to America, going back out to the G7 in Italy, now he's on his way to L.A. right now as we speak to do another event, and I don't know where Donald Trump has been. Railing, railing against the machine on a stage.
. . .
REED GALEN: The one thing we've known about Joe Biden since he took office, is this is a man who meets his moments. He met his moment at the beginning. He met his moment with the economic crisis in the wake of Covid. He met his moment with Ukraine. He has met his moment over and over and over again.
And I think now, look, we are just a few days away now from that first debate. And so what the split screen's gonna look like is exactly what we're going to see in Atlanta not too long from now, which is someone railing against the ghost. Who else is in the room with you, Donald? Do you see the people there?
With someone who's going to be like, you really want four more years of this? You want this back? And I think it's a very stark thing, and there are more Americans -- look, a lot of Americans are upset about their choices. Got it! Okay, but this is where we are. We all know that, like, we're locked in.
People are going to say, wait a minute, yes, inflation is high, it's coming down. But, do I want to go back into a place of more chaos like I had? Do I want to wake up every mornin gand worry about what the president's thinking? That's what people in Russia have to do. And I don't think that the American people will end up wanting.
