In an incredibly awkward moment at the National Governors Association meeting at the White House, First Lady Jill Biden tried cracking a joke with the audience, an attempted anecdote about vocational training, but she missed the punchline and the joke fell flat. The audience didn’t give her much of a laugh, so she snapped at them, making the situation yet worse.
The joke was about her time teaching, and she tried telling an anecdote about a student who wanted to be an auto mechanic saying he didn’t think the learning was useful given his planned career path. The audience didn’t really laugh, with some doing so a bit later and interrupting her, at which point she snapped at them and made an already uncomfortable situation incredibly awkward.
The story that Dr. Jill told was: “As many of you know, I’ve been teaching writing for 40 years. So one day, a student named Harry who wanted to be an auto mechanic raised his hand. ‘Dr. B.,’ he said. ‘The only thing I need to learn how to write is, ‘Needs Brakes.’”
The audience didn’t do much laughing when she told it, but then as she moved on to her point about Americans needing to be able to make a living in the trades, some chuckled a bit late at the attempted joke, once they got it. As they did so, she snapped, “Well, you finally got it! Come on! Wake up!”
Continuing with her speech, Dr. Jill went on to say, “He was joking, of course. But he had a point: he wasn’t just there to learn the art of writing – he was there to prepare himself for a good-paying job. For most people, a high school diploma alone isn’t enough to find a great career. But they often don’t need a four-year degree to pursue their passions either. And as technology brings changes to so many industries, these kinds of learning paths are more important than ever.”
She then claimed that Biden is trying to help such people, saying, “Since he took office, my husband, President Biden, has been focused on rebuilding the middle class. And today, millions of new jobs in infrastructure, clean energy, and manufacturing are being created. We will need to train a new generation of workers to fill them. These positions pay well. And many of them require associate degrees, certificates, or other hands-on instruction, not four years of college.”
Watch the awkward incident here:
Commenting on a clip of the video that took off on X, people said things like, “Like husband like wife,” “It’s not even funny. I kept wondering – did I miss the punch line? Then I realized she was ridiculing blue collar workers,” and “Rude. And ridiculous. They laugh to be kind.”
In response to another tweet about the situation, people said things like “She is so accustomed to everything being scripted and receiving canned responses” and “The worst tandem to occupy the White House since the Obamas.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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