A guest speaker on Fox News shut down a contributor for the channel in a debate over Joe Biden spending “191 days away from the White House”.
The Fox News segment of the The Faulkner Focus on Monday invited liberal activist Jenna Arnold and Fox contributor Sean Duffy for a debate on the president’s weekend vacation while his administration battles a range of issues.
Show host Harris Faulkner began by saying Mr Biden was spotted at a beach in Delaware and questioned him for taking a vacation while “he is so far underwater”.
In response to Faulkner’s comments, Duffy mocked the president by calling him an “old fart” who “took a trip out to the water” from a “nursing home”.
“Listen, with all these problems we face as a country, you want a president who will be engaged and try to take the bull by the horns and fix the problems that you face,” Duffy said.
“When Joe Biden goes on vacation… I look at this and go, when Ronald Reagan went on vacation, he was riding horses, he had his chainsaw, he was clearing brush. George Bush was out riding horses on his ranch, and Joe Biden looks like an old fart going to the beach, almost like he’s in the nursing home who took a trip out to the water for a moment.”
Ms Arnold, an activist and author of Raising Our Hands, countered criticism of Mr Biden’s trip by highlighting his predecessor’s numerous trips to his beachside Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida’s Palm Beach.
“I’m so interested and curious as to why you skipped over Donald Trump’s 298 trips to Mar-a-Lago that cost taxpayers $3.4m, and it all went back to his golf course,” said Ms Arnold.
“Yeah, he did take a lot of vacations, but he was working. I called him when he was on the golf course. Myself as a US congressman,” Duffy replied, adding that the results of his work “were staggering”.
Ms Arnold responded saying golfing was not working as a tense exchange continued between the two over Mr Biden’s performance.
Mr Biden is facing sinking approval ratings amid a pile up of issues ranging from record inflation and high gas prices to rising gun violence and a struggle to pass legislation to quell public outrage over recent deaths from mass shootings.
The response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also hurt his popularity before domestic issues gripped the country, polls showed.
The Democrats are trying to overcome the challenges as they try to revive their prospects by November when mid-term elections may cost them their control over Congress.
