Do you remember how, on his first day in office, Joe Biden announced a zero-tolerance policy for those in his administration who treat others disrespectfully? “If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treated another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise I will fire you on the spot… on the spot! No ifs, ands, or buts.”
It was supposed to be his way of showing that his administration wouldn’t tolerate the disrespectful behavior that the left believed was endemic to the Mean Tweets administration. Many have probably forgotten it because the policy has generally been ignored. In fact, less than a month into his presidency, he violated his zero-tolerance policy when he failed to fire Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo, who threatened to “destroy” a reporter and made misogynistic comments to her. Ducklo was, instead, suspended before he resigned the next day because of the backlash. Another official was found to be disrespectful to colleagues, and he wasn’t fired either. He, like Ducklo, resigned over the backlash, not because of any Biden administration standards of conduct.
Biden’s zero-tolerance policy was clearly just a gimmick that played into the “decency” rhetoric of the campaign and put distance between him and Trump, whose no-holds-barred approach to telling people what’s what struck the wrong chord with many in the media.
Not that Biden has been a beacon of respect and decency either. He’s regularly insulted members of the media who have asked him questions he didn’t like, such as when he responded to a question from Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich about Putin and Ukraine by muttering, “What a stupid question,” or when he called Peter Doocy as a “stupid son of a b*tch” after he asked a question about inflation. These and other incidents were, technically, violations of his zero-tolerance policy. But we’re supposed to believe Biden is a nice guy while Trump was somehow beneath the dignity of the presidency.
Well, once again, Biden’s penchant for decency is under scrutiny. The same man who threatened to “destroy” a reporter and made misogynistic comments to her, TJ Ducklo, has been hired by Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign as a senior communications adviser.
When Joe Biden announced the zero-tolerance policy for disrespect in his administration, he said restoring integrity and competency to the government was necessary.
“Everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity. That’s been missing in a big way the last four years,” he said. “We’re going to be judged by whether or not we restored the integrity and competency [of] this government.”
Not only were decency and dignity not values his administration holds, but the same holds true for his campaign.
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