White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre defended Joe Biden on Thursday after the president laughed while discussing a family whose two sons died from fentanyl overdoses.
When asked, Jean Pierre told reporters that the American people “know who [Joe Biden] is fundamentally,” after he chuckled at the end of a comment about the two overdose deaths.
Fox News reports that Rebecca Kiessling told Congress her sons who died in 2020 from fentanyl. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene would later say that they died during Biden’s tenure. Speaking of the congresswoman, Biden said, “She’s very specific recently saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that the fentanyl they took came during the last administration.” Biden then chuckled.
Biden laughs while talking about a mother whose two sons died due to fentanyl.
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 2, 2023
Kiessling, after seeing Biden’s response, said “I’m shocked to see the video today, as President Biden talked about a congresswoman who misspoke when she said that my children’s deaths are the cause of President Biden’s policy failure.”
She later added, “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?”
“This is unacceptable, and our president needs to apologize to me, and he needs to be held accountable,” Kiessling added.
During Thursday’s presser, Jean Pierre was asked if the Biden had any apology to offer to the mother or any regrets on how his message came across. Jean Pierre admitted that “he regretted how that came out.”
“When it comes to this President, I believe the American people knows who he is fundamentally because he’s been around for some time, and they have watched him go through grief. They have watched him deal with really personal loss. And so this is a president that understands that.
“He expressed sympathy for 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,” she added.
Jean-Pierre then said Biden’s words were 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 certain network and and, you know, it and you know, I’ll just leave it there.”
A reporter asks the WH press sec if Biden regrets how his comments and laughter while talking about a mother who lost her sons to fentanyl came out:
"His words are being mischaracterized by someone who is regularly discredited…" pic.twitter.com/zOUkvpCfrL
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 2, 2023
