Democrats in Washington are angry and frustrated at Joe Biden’s response to the classified documents scandal that has blown up early in the new year. Not only is it a classic “drip, drip, drip” of revelations that bring new headlines at a furious pace, but Democrats are also worried about the president’s ability to get out ahead of the scandal.
They also worry that Republicans have latched on to the scandal, are holding on with a bulldog grip, and are not letting go.
“They’re trying to put lipstick on a pig,” one Democrat close to the White House said of Biden’s team on Friday. “The problem is this week they got handed 50 pigs and one stick of lipstick.”
Exactly. The vaunted White House messaging shop has lost control of the narrative, leaving Republicans free to substitute their own.
A Democratic Party official from the Northeast aligned closely with the president and his senior staff added, “There’s no real equivalency between the Trump document situation and Biden’s. However, why in the world didn’t they get the story out earlier, like before the holidays? And why didn’t they get the full story out at once, instead of drip, drip, drip with each new discovery of documents? Put simply, it was not handled well at all.”
The Democrats’ “Trump did it too only worse” argument may be an effective talking point, but it’s hardly relevant where the law is concerned. There’s nothing in the law that grants Biden a pass because he had fewer classified documents in his possession compared to Trump, nor does the law give a gold star to those who cooperate with authorities as opposed to those who might resist. It’s a ludicrous point but has already been made the primary argument in Biden’s favor.
“Comparing Biden’s cooperation to Trump’s obstruction is like comparing apples and arsenic,” Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, wrote on Friday.
Related: CONFIRMED: Joe Biden Did Have Documents Classified as ‘Top Secret’
Again, cooperation might be good politically for the president but is not a legal argument for exoneration.
“This is going to be a pretty big problem for the president,” said one Democratic strategist who spoke anonymously about the issue. “Republicans have always been good at drumming up scandal and even though the situation here with Biden is completely different than the situation involving Trump, they’re going to act like this is a huge deal.”
While Democrats say they remain confident that Biden can overcome the problem, they say the disclosure of numerous batches of classified documents complicates matters for the president ahead of his campaign launch.
Privately, they wonder how tough it will be for Biden to explain what happened and draw comparisons to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email controversy, in which the former secretary of State admitted to using a private email account while doing government business.
There are echoes of the way Clinton botched the handling of her email controversy in what’s happening with Biden. Biden’s legal case is helped by him keeping his mouth shut and his lawyers staying quiet, using the excuse of an “ongoing investigation” to keep a lid on the scandal.
But the demands of politics are different. Lest Biden is accused of a coverup, he must be out front and candid on the issue of classified documents. The problem is that every word he utters about the scandal will be disassembled, twisted, folded, spindled, and mutilated then shoehorned into the competing GOP narrative. Crime doesn’t pay, but neither does airing out one’s soiled laundry.
So much for “transparency.”
The one big advantage Biden has over Trump is that the major media is eager to put this scandal behind them and get back to their Trump-bashing. Without some bombshell revelation that will force them to keep covering the story, this scandal will run out of steam in a week or two.
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