In a moment probably to be expected of the elderly president but revolting and disappointing regardless, President Joe Biden decided to start cracking a joke via a pun as he spoke about the hugely destructive and wildly out-of-control California wildfires alongside Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, January 9.
For reference, three major fires in the Los Angeles area remained out of control when President Biden started cracking his jokes, and they caused massive damage to the areas through which they tore. Particularly, it appears that the vast majority, if not the entirety, of the once-glamorous and beautiful Pacific Palisades neighborhood was obliterated by the fires.
In any case, at one point during his Thursday press conference on the fires, Biden patted himself on the back for being a grandpa, taking the time out of a meeting supposedly on combatting the fires to do so. Beginning, he said, “It’s astounding what’s happened. There’s only one piece of good news. My son lives out here and his wife.”
He continued, getting to the grandpa comment, “Their — they got a notification yesterday that their home is probably burned to the ground. Today, it appears that maybe it’s still standing. We’re not sure. But the good news is I’m a great-grandfather as of today. My eldest granddaughter. A 10-pound, 4-ounce baby girl — baby boy. So, I — I’m going to remember this day for a lot of the wrong reasons. But anyway.”
More infuriatingly to many, he cracked a joke about the fires as he gave over the floor to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is from California and lives in the LA area, with her home surrounded by fires at the time of the press conference. He said, making a pun about the fires, “Madam Vice President, I know you’re directly affected. So you fire away, no pun intended.”
Predictably, the comment set people off online. One commenter on a post about the remark that went viral said, commenting on the lack of leadership from Biden in crisis after crisis, “Is this real life right now? Everything we’ve seen these last 72hrs just reinforces the reason why we re-elected Trump. A complete & total lack of leadership.”
Another commenter slammed him for being “unhinged” with his jokes about the fire, saying he was “going full diabolical.” That commenter wrote, “Biden is actually unhinged dropping 
puns in a presser for the worst fire in LA history without a single fuck given. NGL sort of respect him for going full diabolical Dark Brandon here in a f*cked up sorta way.” Watch Biden here;
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Joining in the commentary, the RNC Research X account posted the clip and captioned it, “BIDEN: ‘Fire away. No pun intended.’ Is there something funny about this? Absolutely disgusting.” A commenter on that post wrote, “People have lost their homes and some have even lost their lives and this guy has jokes.”
Another commenter on the RNC Research post said, “Watching these two talk during a national emergency gives me no peace. It actually scares me more!” Also chiming in, Townhall.com columnist Derek Hunter wrote, “Most of the time, @JoeBiden is just a mean, vindictive person (has been his whole career), but in this case I think this can be blamed on his senility.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video