The White House on Thursday hit back at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) when asked why President Biden chuckled during remarks he was making about being blamed for the death of a woman’s two sons to fentanyl.
Biden addressed the House Democratic caucus during its issues retreat in Baltimore on Wednesday night when he sarcastically brought up Greene, who had previously blamed the Biden administration’s border policies for the deaths of the woman’s sons.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden’s words were being mischaracterized when asked if the president regretted how his comments were delivered.
“His words are being mischaracterized by someone who is regularly discredited for things that she says that are really conspiracy theories, and those lies are being parroted by a certain network and I’ll just leave it there,” Jean-Pierre said, referring to Greene.
The mother, conservative activist Rebecca Kiessling of Michigan, has since asked for an apology from Biden for his remarks in Baltimore.
“As President Biden was speaking about this mother who lost her two sons, he starts to laugh… This is how you speak about the death of my sons? Because a congresswoman misspoke? You mock the loss of my sons? How dare you. What is the matter with you?” Kiessling said in a statement, according to Fox News.
In responding to Greene’s claims that the Biden administration was the cause due to fentanyl that she said came across the southern border, Biden noted that the death of the woman’s sons had actually occurred under the Trump administration.
“She was very specific — I shouldn’t digress, probably — I read, she was very specific recently saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is, that fentanyl they took came during the last administration,” Biden said, letting out a chuckle.
Biden also mocked Greene in his remarks where he predicted middle-of-the-road Republicans would move toward Democrats if more GOP lawmakers such as Greene emerge.
“It’s hard as hell, I acknowledge, but it’s there,” he said of the possibility for bipartisan cooperation. “And, you know, a little bit more of Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few more, you’re gonna have a lot of Republicans running our way.”
Biden then paused and let out a chuckle, shared by the room, before saying of Greene, “isn’t she amazing?”
On Thursday, Jean-Pierre also sought to note that Biden has experienced personal loss in his own life and said he sympathizes with Kiessling.
“The American people … have watched him go through grief, they have watched him deal with really personal loss,” she said. “And so, this is a president that understands that. He expressed sympathy to her last night. And his heart goes out to any person, any person who has to go through that type of trauma, that type of hurt.”
When questioned by Greene during a meeting on Capitol Hill last week, Kiessling responded “absolutely” when the congresswoman asked her if her sons would be alive if the southern border was secured. Kiessling then discussed the government’s alleged role in the drug crisis.
Greene had posted a clip of the exchange on Twitter that day, writing “Listen to this mother, who lost two children to fentanyl poisoning, tell the truth about both of her son’s murders because of the Biden administrations refusal to secure our border and stop the Cartel’s from murdering Americans everyday by Chinese fentanyl.”