CNN’s Chris Wallace Roasts Republicans for Heckling Biden at State Of The Union speech: ‘They Literally Played Into His Hands’

CNN anchor Chris Wallace roasted Republicans for heckling President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, telling viewers the GOP “literally played into his hands.”?Biden delivered his first State of the Union address under the new GOP House majority Tuesday night, & a raucous majority it turned out to be. At one point during the speech, Biden invoked plans from several Republicans that would cause programs like Social Security to sunset every few years, & found himself flat-out arguing with Republicans screaming “LIAR!” in the middle of the speech. Seconds after the speech ended, anchor Jake Tapper & his coverage team gushed about Biden’s performance & noted the heckling — Tapper even called it “an in-kind contribution” from the Republicans. Tapper returned to the theme later in the coverage, & Wallace opined that the scenario played out almost as if Biden & his team had planned it — & CNN anchor Abby Phillip agreed:

TAPPER: Very interesting. Phil Mattingly, thank you so much. & Chris Wallace, the point that you & Abby Phillip were making earlier, I just keep thinking about the idea that not only did the House Republicans, & again, it was a minority of them, it was not most of them, but the ones who were unruly & yelling & heckling the president, not only did they make themselves look bad, I think really it was an opportunity to look vigorous.

CHRIS WALLACE, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, absolutely. I mean, they literally played into his hands. You know, I don’t know if the people of the White House as they were drafting it at Camp David this weekend envisioned that happening the way it did, but it played out perfectly. & you know, I’m looking back at the end of that whole sequence where he was engaging back & forth with the Republicans, he said, so tonight, let’s all agree to stand up for seniors. And of course, one of the things that you notice in the speeches is half the House, the Democratic side for Democratic presidents stands up, the other side sit on their hands. When he said let’s, all stand up for seniors, there was no politician who was not going to stand up for seniors. & so, they were standing up while he said, let’s all agree not to cut social security, let’s all agree not to cut Medicare. And when they were all standing up, he said, well, apparently, it’s not going to be a problem. It was a brilliant moment that, you know, it like took something that had been prepared by the speech writers & he made it his own & he made it magic. It was really quite a piece of political showmanship.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris is so right about that. I mean, talking to White House officials today, nobody was saying oh, they are going to beat Republicans, but as you listen to them talk through what they wanted to hit in the speech, they were going right to the heart at all of the big agenda items that are there on the list of attacks from Republicans.

And that was intentional. They wanted to put a Biden agenda on the table that actually, if you’re listening — if you’re an American person at home & you’re not listening to all the back & forth & for the first time you are hearing anything about some of these things, you’re hearing it from President Biden, giving a plan on dealing with opioids, giving a plan or saying to Republicans, let’s talk about immigration, but if you don’t want to talk about immigration, let’s at least pay for border security. Those things will sound eminently reasonable to you.

TAPPER: Yeah.

PHILLIP: You hear what Biden is saying. You can’t even hear the heckling at all. & I think that was definitely by design. They wanted to get some points on the board on those fronts so that Republicans couldn’t say that Biden was not going to engage with them on this these issues. If the American people are listening for the very first time, they are hearing it from Biden first.

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