- While meeting with the prime minister of India and tech CEOs, Biden made a joke.
- "I started off without you, and I sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things that we shared," Biden said before adding, "Now, all kidding aside."
President Joe Biden made a joke during a press conference with the prime minister of India and tech CEOs. Now, Republican legislators are sharing a spliced clip of it in an attempt to discredit the president.
Just as cameras began to focus on Biden at the beginning of the conference, he said to the camera, "I started off without you, and I sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things that we shared."
The interaction led to a laugh from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the president's audience.
"Now, all kidding aside — look, we're teaming up to design and develop new technologies that are going to transform the lives of our people around the world," Biden ended the joke with.
Biden's joke comes around the time former President Donald Trump was federally indicted for mishandling classified documents.
In the days following Biden's press conference, select Republican legislators spread the clip without Biden saying "all kidding aside" to attack his credibility.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been an outspoken critic of Biden and has attempted to impeach Biden on several occasions, most recently in May in relation to his handling of the US-Mexico border. She tweeted out the spliced video with a call to action to impeach the president.
"Joe Biden's brain is going and he's literally admitting his crimes out loud," Greene wrote. "Impeach Biden! It's unreal and so insulting to America."
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a stalwart of the House Freedom Caucus, also shared Greene's clip. Prior to the GOP officially taking control of the House, he said that impeaching Biden was a "priority."
"What in the world," he tweeted.
And Rep. Nancy Mace, who previously voted against impeaching President Donald Trump, shared the video three times, each time expanding on her disappointment with Biden.
"This is mind boggling. Truly. Where is the media? Where is their investigation? When will they get to the bottom of it all?" Mace tweeted.
By her third tweet on the subject, Mace made an indirect point to note the video was a joke, just not one she found humorous.
"This isn't funny," she tweeted.