‘Let Me Stop You Right There’: Tom Friedman Roasted for ‘Embarrassing’ Column About Off-the-Record Lunch with Biden

Michael LucianoMay 23rd, 2022, 4:36 pm
 
Tom Friedman

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been taking some heat over a column published on Sunday. 

Friedman has long interspersed his columns with chatty anecdotes about movers and shakers in the realms of politics and business. His latest piece is yet another example. However, the meeting in question was an off-the-record lunch with President Joe Biden.

Titled, “My Lunch With President Biden,” the piece begins:

President Biden invited me for lunch at the White House last Monday. But it was all off the record — so I can’t tell you anything he said.

I can, though, tell you two things — what I ate and how I felt after. I ate a tuna salad sandwich with tomato on whole wheat bread, with a bowl of mixed fruit and a chocolate milkshake for dessert that was so good it should have been against the law.

Friedman further claims that Democrats might be able to get 10% of Republican voters to support Biden, but he states that “we may not be able to get even 1 percent of Republicans to shift if far-left Democrats are seen as defining the party’s future.”

The column also declares Friedman departed his lunch with Biden “with a full stomach but a heavy heart” – twice.

Predictably, Friedman’s column soared like a lead balloon on Twitter.

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Michael Luciano - Senior Editor

Mike is a Mediaite senior editor who covers the news in primetime. Follow him on Bluesky.