Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice.
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Ask any Democratic operative these days, including some who work in the Biden White House, about the Twitter account they find most noxious and you’re likely to get the same answer.
@RNCResearch — the handle for the Republican National Committee to sling mud, tar opponents, and try to shape news cycles — is perhaps the purest distillation of GOP politics in the DONALD TRUMP era. And that’s for good reason. The conservatives behind the feed deliberately took a page from the Trump war room when charting out how they wanted to attack President JOE BIDEN at the start of his term last year: Flood the zone and bully opponents.
The early goal, one RNC official recalled, was to be dog-on-a-bone aggressive in an effort to boot Biden out of his political honeymoon. The brass eagerly complied.
“You are speaking my language,” the official recounted telling a colleague when they talked about having a truly pugnacious account early last year. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”
The RNC says its account has played a role in knocking Biden down multiple pegs. But its hostile approach has not always been synonymous with accuracy. Over the course of the Biden presidency, the account, which has more than 242,000 followers and about 30 GOP dedicated researchers who contribute to it, has occasionally been hit by the arrows it’s tried to sling.
This week, @RNCResearch highlighted a clip of Biden struggling“,”link”:{“target”:”NEW”,”attributes”:[],”url”:”https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1556742881225969664″,”_id”:”00000182-8f71-d47d-afa2-cffd8fe80008″,”_type”:”33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df”},”_id”:”00000182-8f71-d47d-afa2-cffd8fe80009″,”_type”:”02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266″}”a clip of Biden struggling to put on his jacket in the wind — an otherwise innocuous moment that led to complaints of triviality. The account also featured a snippet of the president asking Kentucky Gov. ANDY BESHEAR for permission to speak. The idea was to frame Biden as a pushover“,”link”:{“target”:”NEW”,”attributes”:[],”url”:”https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1556708820579241986″,”_id”:”00000182-8f71-d47d-afa2-cffd8fe8000a”,”_type”:”33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df”},”_id”:”00000182-8f71-d47d-afa2-cffd8fe8000b”,”_type”:”02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266″}”frame Biden as a pushover. Many observers noticed a president acting polite.
In April, @RNCResearch claimed Biden was pooped on by a bird at an indoor event in Iowa. The Daily Mail ran with the…
Read More: The White House’s least favorite Twitter account- POLITICO