First Lady Jill Biden had to prompt the audience to applaud for her during a speech on Thursday after a line about “common values” fell flat with the crowd.
Biden was addressing attendees of the Reagan Institute Summit on Education (RISE) when she urged the group to clap in a video that quickly went viral. In the clip, Biden talks about visiting “red states and blue states” and discovering that the “common values that unite us are deeper than our divisions.”
After delivering the line, she pauses for a long moment, apparently waiting for applause, only to be met with silence. The First Lady began to move on, then backtracked when she felt she needed affirmation for her perceived profundity.
“I thought you might clap for that,” Biden said, to which the audience immediately whipped into a frenzy in response to her desperation.
JILL BIDEN: "I've found that the common values that unite us are deeper than our divisions!"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 25, 2023
*crickets*
"I thought you might clap for that!" pic.twitter.com/UJEhPHyHRi
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Social media users were quick to comment their thoughts on Biden’s statements in the comments section.
“It’s bad when you have to beg for it,” Twitter user @RunawayBoomer said in the comments of @townhallcom’s tweet of the clip.
“What common values would they be?” another Twitter user asked.
Not getting the response wanted must run in the family, because in 2021, President Joe Biden was speaking to the Coast Guard graduates, calling them “dull” before alluding to applause when he didn’t really get a response at all after making a comment about the Navy.
“I would think you’d have an opportunity, when I say that about the Navy, to clap,” the president said.
The First Lady was one of more than 70 panelists for RISE 2023, talking about education reform and “the call to modernize our education system and prepare for the challenges of the 22nd century,” according to the event’s web page.
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To be fair though Biden's not one for knowing what's going on. pic.twitter.com/CwQdXVUeJt
— MRCTV (@mrctv) May 25, 2023