Joe Biden made a comment yesterday during his G20 meeting in Rome that, if made by President Donald Trump, would have excited great media attention and immediate attack.

Biden made a reference to the “trains running on time” — a phrase that is associated with fascist former Italian leader Benito Mussolini — and Biden made the comment in Rome.

At what point do you pull him out..???..!!! pic.twitter.com/2W9Fo1RatV

— Thomas OConnor 🇺🇲 Born '62 🇺🇲 Only LEGAL VOTES (@TheyCallMeTomO1) October 31, 2021

How do we know that the media would have fallen all over it if Trump had made it?

Here’s what Bloomberg said in 2016.

“When you are trying to convince America that its new leader is not a fascist,” New York Magazine’s Margaret Hartmann and Chas Danner suggested recently, “it’s best not to make any Mussolini references.”

Too late. That advice was directed at former Cincinnati mayor Ken Blackwell, a member of the Trump transition team. Blackwell just assured the Wall Street Journal that Reince Preibus, the RNC chair picked as White House chief of staff, would “utilize his personal connections with the speaker [Rep. Paul Ryan] and others, to make the trains run on time.”

They were trying to use anything they could to paint Trump as a fascist from the very beginning, even before he came in, not based on any reality, even when the comment wasn’t from Trump himself.

That comment from Preibus wasn’t made in Rome. What do they think the folks in Rome will think about that remark from Biden yesterday? But it’s Biden, so the media won’t even cover it at all. They’ll skip right around it and won’t make any fascist references, of course.

After the meeting, most of the G20 leaders who were there then went to visit the Trevi Fountain and engaged in the famous ritual of tossing a coin in the fountain. Except guess who was missing?

Some G20 leaders tossed coins into the Trevi Fountain in Rome, a tradition for visitors that dates back hundreds of years. Legend has it that whoever throws a coin into the fountain returns to the city pic.twitter.com/l1tK2vTFUc

— Reuters (@Reuters) October 31, 2021

G20 leaders did the Trevi Fountain coin toss this morning in Rome (Biden didn’t participate) pic.twitter.com/Sp9nz4GNd6

— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) October 31, 2021

Where was Biden? Now, we saw that in the group photo that they took on the first day, he was almost missing from that photo, too, he was pushed so far over to the end of the photo. It’s not clear how he ended up on the end of the photo, but as we said, not a good visual. That’s what they apparently think of him. Now he completely blows off another photo op? They walked over to the fountain, was it too much? Did he need to go back and get a nap? Was he too busy throwing our money away to toss a little bit of his own away? He definitely did have a hard time during the first meeting when he was 20 minutes late because he was “playing with elevators” and where he also appeared weak, pleading with Russia to pump more oil.

Now he’s off to Glasgow, Scotland for the climate change conference. That promises to be fun, after he showed how hypocritical he was in Rome with his 85 car motorcade.