Trump senior adviser compares Joe Biden to Mr. Rogers, evidently considers that a bad thing

The Trump campaign, evidently, wasn't terribly pleased with the dueling town halls between President Trump on NBC and Democratic nominee Joe Biden on ABC Thursday night. And Trump campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp, who spent two years as Trump's White House director of strategic communications, had an interesting way expressing that displeasure.

Comparing Joe Biden to Fred Rogers certainly isn't unreasonable, but it is an interesting strategy if you want to win over anyone who loved and respected the long-running PBS show, who died in 2003. Even if you didn't revere Mister Rogers, nobody considered him a scary antifa-loving socialist, though you could maybe view his calming demeanor as "sleepy."

If you are unfamiliar with the Mister Rogers oeuvre, Mr. Rogers himself gave a pretty good summation in his final show.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It doesn't appear that Schlapp was freelancing, either. Another Trump campaign senior adviser, Steve Cortes, said on Fox News that the ABC town hall reminded him of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, calling it "the equivalent of a church ice cream social for Joe Biden." So maybe the talking point is that ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos is Fred Rogers? He probably wouldn't object to that comparison, either.