“Fox & Friends” anchors sparred Wednesday over President Joe Biden’s jab at Republicans in his State of the Union Address.
Biden asserted that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, causing an uproar among the House and Senate Republicans in attendance. Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene most notably stood up and called the president a “liar.”
Fox News anchor Steve Doocy sparred with his fellow co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt after claiming that the president purposely tried to get a rise out of Republicans.
“We knew Joe Biden was going to do this because he does it every time,” Doocy said. “He talks about how Republicans want to cut your Social Security and Medicare which really angers people, also it’s not true. Here’s the thing, you can tell it was inserted in the speech because he wanted to bait the Republicans and he wanted some back and forth.”
“You think he wanted that?” co-host Brian Kilmeade said.
“Absolutely, you know why? Because he had a big smile on this face,” Doocy said. “He was so happy that the Republicans went ahead and jeered at him.”
“But they called him out on it, they said they didn’t think he wanted it either,” co-host Ainley Earhardt interjected. “Let me tell you why, Steve, because the Republicans yelled ‘we didn’t want that. You’re a liar,’ then he has to be on the defensive. And he said ‘wait a minute, I guess we’re on the same page.’” (RELATED: Is This A Joke? Biden Says US Will Need Oil ‘For At Least Another Decade’…GOP Bursts Into Laughter)
Doocy argued that the president “wanted to engage” the opposing party with that remark, while Kilmeade argued that Biden already knew Republicans did not want to make cuts to either program.
“He knew that, he knew that wasn’t even a debate,” Kilmeade said.
“But it’s just about clips,” Doocy argued.
“Kevin McCarthy in the afternoon said Medicare and Social Security are not part of the conversation when it comes to the debt ceiling,” Kilmeade continued.
Biden changed course after the backlash and called on bipartisan support for senior citizens, leading House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the other Republicans to stand and cheer in solidarity with the president. Republicans have repeatedly vowed not to slash funding for Social Security or Medicare in talks on budget cuts necessary to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.
“Let’s take those [cuts] completely off the table,” McCarthy told “Face the Nation” in a Jan. 29 interview. “If you read our Commitment to America, all we talk about is strengthening Medicare and Social Security. I know the president says he doesn’t want to look at it, but we have to make sure we strengthen those.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has repeatedly claimed that Republicans want to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare in talks about raising the debt ceiling.