President Biden, who criticizes former President Donald Trump for denying the results of the 2020 election, joked Tuesday that former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is the state’s “real” governor.
“Hello, Virginia, and the real governor, Terry McAuliffe,” Mr. Biden said of his Democratic ally with a smile as he began a speech in Manassas on abortion rights.
Mr. McAuliffe was governor from 2014 to 2018.
The state’s current governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, responded on X: “Mr. President, I’m right here.”
The Republican National Committee called the president “election denier Joe Biden.”
Jonah Goldberg, a conservative commentator and editor of The Dispatch, called Mr. Biden’s remark “monstrously stupid, even if intended as a silly joke.”
“If you’re going to make the other side’s election denial central to your campaign, the last thing you want to do is this nonsense,” he wrote on X.