The outfit we had been promised would bring professionalism and class dishes out a full serving of ineptitude.

As the world knows by now, Dr. First Lady Jill Biden spoke at a Hispanic conference this week and managed to make a remarkable spectacle of herself. While the primary focus has been on her referring to Hispanic people as “breakfast tacos”, there was so much more. Beyond that inherent racism, this risible Biden speech displayed so many of the built-in problems seen with the Biden administration.

In an effort to run defense and deflection MSNBC rises to the occasion, and the many ways this sympathetic effort fails further reveals the ineffectiveness inherent in their system. It begins with the desperate attempt to pass off Biden’s comment as a “gaffe”, as if she slipped up while speaking randomly. Then the news net took the blatantly desperate moves that show how little standing they had – they go with the Republicans pounce trope, and then resorted to “But, Trump” to excuse things away. Not only does this fail to land, but the explanation falls apart within their own commentary.

It’s time to pause from the latest manufactured right-wing outrage and examine why her comments, although slightly problematic, pale in comparison to years of even more dangerous rhetoric against a community still fighting back against lazy stereotypes.

To start, if this outrage was manufactured, why did Jill Biden’s communications team feel the need to issue an apology? Then the desperate move to pass this off as a product of the right-wing outrage machine withers when you see who was actually making the comments. I don’t think anyone is ready to describe Univision Noticias as a right-wing news source. Then there was the National Association of Hispanic Journalists also scorching Dr. First Lady Jill, another notably not-Right outfit. In fact, disregarding these Hispanic journalist outlets could be considered somewhat racist, in a fashion.

But then MSNBC tees up more examples of this same family having a history of problematic issues with the Hispanic community.

As much as they don’t want to admit it, Democrats, particularly the Bidens, have been uncomfortable practitioners in not understanding the complexity of the Latino community. Last year, the first lady mispronounced the iconic “Sí se puede” chant in Spanish, leading to some head shakes. About 10 years ago, then-Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to the National Council of La Raza (the previous name of UnidosUS) made a bizarre analogy between Mitt Romney’s tax returns and Latinos having to show their immigration papers, as if immigration status is what solely defined the community.

We are looking at repeated examples spanning a decade they want to pass off as created by those on the Right, and this impacted thinking is hardly reserved for MSNBC. Just the mere argument that Biden executed a gaffe is unraveled by logic. She did not deliver a malaprop while trying to ad-lib a response; this was a prepared speech, and she read off of a teleprompter. 

This spin was dispelled by another attempt at excusing her words as someone else’s issue. Ashley Parker at the Washington Post noted in her coverage that the speech had been signed off by no fewer than three divisions inside the administration – including the offices of intergovernmental affairs, legislative affairs, and public engagement. 

What they are desperate to spin is a glaring example of a structured problem inside this White House. Look at Jill’s entire speech, and you get examples of how they are off the rails. From the way she mangled the term bodegas (pronounced by her as “bo-geh-DAHS” – and later revised in the official White House transcript) to the other tone-deaf references, you get the sense that Mrs. Biden had barely reviewed this speech ahead of time. Looking at the contents, you can tell this was a grave error.

This was a simple case of political pandering, and the fact that no one picked up on the fact that you were reducing a vast community to a simple foodstuff is just the start. The homogenized approach to Hispanics is exposed by going with the taco reference; how many Cubans felt that they had been included by that comment, or how many Puerto Ricans felt their culture had been referenced? 

The conference itself was another poorly chosen endeavor for the administration, as it leans heavily on an approach many Hispanic have repelled. This had been billed as the LatinX Incluxion Luncheon, deploying the terminology that has been met with more than dismissiveness in Hispanic communities. A significant portion of Latinos not only ignore the term “LatinX”, but they are also offended by it, with many declaring a tendency to not want to vote for candidates who employ that term.

It becomes just another way this supposedly expert administration shows how they lack some of the basic skills needed to communicate to the public. The problems become compounded when you have leaders who struggle to communicate in public.

''Yea, Jill – Honey! They all just signed off on your speech, so you are good to vamos.
You let that taco line fly, Chica!'' https://t.co/K2C4Ku63q7 pic.twitter.com/Kzwv3L8ZZH

— Brad Slager – Unique Taco/Lifetime CNN+ Subscriber (@MartiniShark) July 12, 2022