Twitter Users 'Think' Biden Can Reclassify Trump Documents Telepathically
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, presidentially speaking.
That’s what many Twitter users figured out after Donald Trump bizarrely suggested to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday that a president can declassify sensitive documents simply “by thinking about it.”
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” the former president said. “You can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”
The odd remarks came after the FBI found government documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last month, with the former president claiming — thus far without evidence — that he had declassified them while still in office.
Although many legal scholars have disputed his dubious declassification assertion, some Twitter users saw an opportunity for Trump’s successor in a question posed by Daily Beast pundit Molly Jong-Fast.
Can Biden re-classify the documents by just thinking about it ?
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) September 22, 2022
“Can [Joe] Biden re-classify the documents by just thinking about it ?” she tweeted Thursday.
Others on the platform agreed that one bullshit legal theory deserved another.
This is a good point, Biden could say “Yeah well I thought-reclassified everything that’s ever been declassified the moment I took office” and it would have the same foundation as Trump’s argument. https://t.co/aOVwXC8OEW
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) September 22, 2022
I would laugh really hard if Joe Biden went on Twitter this morning and said he reclassified in his mind everything found at Mar-a-Lago that *might* have been declassified by Trump.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) September 22, 2022
Right now, soooo many people are wondering if Trump had also been thinking about pardoning them. https://t.co/QdKjJFCzaR
— Brandon Withrow (@bwithrow) September 22, 2022
But they also some had questions.
And do you have to be in the same room as the documents when you're thinking them into a different status? Can Biden, say, be out of the country and think whatever's at Mar-a-Lago back into classified status? Or does he have to be in a certain radius of the documents? https://t.co/2y5q7CGAhg
— Jarvis DeBerry (@jarvisdeberry) September 22, 2022
What if President Biden testifies that the moment he finished taking the Oath of Office, he thought, "All documents that Donald Trump mentally classified are hereby declassified -- kazaam!" No way to contradict him, right?
— Kevin Carey (@kevincarey1) September 22, 2022
Why is there even a POTUS twitter account if Biden isn’t tweeting that he reclassified all the documents with his mind
— Ryan Marino MD (@RyanMarino) September 22, 2022
One user suggested there might be a problem if Biden announced that he telepathically reclassified all of Trump’s telepathically declassified documents.
Trump: I said the secret word. It’s declassified.
Biden: I said the secret word. It’s reclassified.
Trump: That only works for me!— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) September 22, 2022
HuffPost reached out to the White House to see if Biden has engaged in telepathic reclassification, but no one responded by press time, telepathically or otherwise.
However, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was grilled on the topic during a Thursday appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
“We all wish we had magical powers. I’m sure!” Jean-Pierre said, while trying to stifle giggles. ”I can’t say much about any investigation, but of course, the president believes that it is important to properly handle classified information. That is something that is important to do. And as it relates to this case, I’m not going to comment on it — going to let the experts do their thing.”
"[Pres. Biden] believes that it is important to properly handle classified information," White House @PressSec tells #TheView.
"As it relates to this case, I'm not going to comment on it," she says referring to the investigation into classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/lWpJmnlzit— The View (@TheView) September 22, 2022
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.