President Biden was on the road Wednesday to campaign for re-election. He sat down with CNN's Erin Burnett for a rare television interview in Wisconsin.
Biden was talking up his plans to build up manufacturing and tech jobs in the Midwest.
Biden told some whoppers during the interview, as is his habit. The president is underwater in all the important concerns of voters. He is behind Donald Trump in national and swing state polls.
On the economy, Biden showed how out of touch he is with everyday life for most Americans. Scranton Joe is a career politician and that is apparent.
A major problem for Biden is that he tries to claim how strong the economy is and how well his policies are working. Voters are not feeling it. There is a real malaise in the country, something not seen since the days of the Carter administration. About 60% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck.
When asked, Biden said he understands that people are feeling the pain of higher grocery prices and the costs of other necessities but that people have more money in their pockets to pay for them. “They have the money to spend. It angers them and it angers me that they have to spend more."
No, that is the opposite of what is happening. In Biden's America, people have less disposable income. There is a disturbing trend with American consumers putting basic purchases, like groceries, on credit cards. Credit card debt is skyrocketing.
Biden claimed that Americans think their financial situation is good, even when they think the general economy is not. This doesn't track with a CNN poll conducted in late April. That poll, conducted by SSRS, showed that 70% of Americans said economic conditions were poor and there is dismal approval of Biden's handling of the economy.
How do Americans feel about their finances? CNN's polling director Jennifer Agiesta summarized the findings.
Americans’ perceptions of their finances also remain negative, with 53% saying they are dissatisfied with their financial situation while 47% are satisfied. Dissatisfaction is starkly prevalent among those with lower incomes (67% dissatisfied in households with annual incomes lower than $50,000), people of color (64% say they are dissatisfied), and younger Americans (61% of those younger than 45 say they are dissatisfied).
Team Biden chose the location of his Wisconsin event to highlight something from the Trump administration. A Taiwanese tech manufacturing firm, Foxconn, agreed to set up a manufacturing facility in Racine but it never happened. Biden was there to announce a plan by Microsoft to build a data hub in Racine to train workers on how to use artificial intelligence.
Biden continues to brag about creating 15 million jobs during his time in the White House, though that claim has been widely debunked. A large portion of those are jobs that were lost during the pandemic and came back as the pandemic ebbed and businesses were able to re-open.
Boldly he said he comes at the economy from "a Scranton perspective" and Trump comes at it from "a Mar-a-Lago perspective." Malarkey. The economy during the Trump years, pre-pandemic, was booming, thanks to Trump's policies and tax cuts for everyone.
Joe Biden frequently says the polls are wrong. Numbers are not, though, and Trump's record of job creation and a strong economy are evidence that a businessman and a career politician take different approaches to building an economy. Biden oddly said that Trump failed in creating jobs but he (Biden) has not failed.
On inflation, Biden told a whopper. He said that inflation was at 9% when he came into office. No. Inflation was at 1.4%, even with the pandemic raging, when Trump left office. By June 2022, inflation was at 9.1%, thanks to Biden's economic policies and out-of-control government spending. Inflation has come down but it is still higher than when Trump left office - it is currently at 3.5%, up from 3.2% last month.
I focused on the economy because that is the top issue with voters. Biden's policies have been disastrous yet he spins reality into a positive for his administration. People vote their pocketbooks.
On the worries that Trump won't accept election results if he loses in November, Biden suggested Trump doesn't believe in democracy.
“The guy is not a democrat with a small d,” Biden said, suggesting Trump does not believe in democracy. He added that Trump if reelected, has promised to use his attorney general to target certain people and to be his supporters’ “retribution.”
“What president has ever said anything like this stuff?” Biden said. “And he means it.”
The 81-year-old's lack of self-awareness is breathtaking on that point. Democrats always accuse Republicans of doing what they do. What president has ever tried to jail his opponent so that he can win re-election? That would be Joe Biden. He has politicized every aspect of the federal government, including his DOJ. Biden has introduced lawfare into the presidential election to keep Trump out of the White House. Indictments have been issued against Trump that have never been issued to previous presidents.
The truth is that voters see what is going on. Every time Trump was indicted, his support rose. Trump is in a courtroom now and he is still ahead of Biden in polls. Trump is up in all the swing states that both campaigns are concentrating on, tied in one of them because voters are not dumb. They understand what is happening. Voters don't like it.
Biden is trying to have it both ways with the campus protests in support of Hamas. He has capitulated and thrown Israel under the bus to appease Muslim Arab American voters in Dearborn, Michigan, and other areas that he must win in November. Young voters are leaving Biden in droves, as are Muslims. Biden is cutting off sending bombs and munition to Israel, though Congress has approved it, to punish Israel if Netanyahu goes through with fighting in Rafah. Netanyahu said he will push on, with or without the help of the United States.
Denying the munitions means Israel will not be able to conduct the war with the precision attacks it is known for. Does Biden want more casualties and death? That is what will happen. Israel is doing what it has to to survive as a country. Biden acts as though he wants Hamas to win. It's all political for him.
There is a legitimate right to free speech and protest. There’s a legitimate right to do that and they have a right to do that. But there’s not a legitimate right to use hate speech. There’s not a legitimate right to threaten Jewish students. There is not a legitimate right to block people’s access to class. That’s against the law.
From there, he tried to pivot to explaining that he has counseled Israel to develop better plans for what to do in Gaza, and he compared it with mistakes the US made after 9/11 when it invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
“It made sense to get (Osama) bin Laden; it made no sense to try and unify Afghanistan. It made no sense in my view to engage in thinking that in Iraq they had a nuclear weapon,” Biden said. Those are both political sore spots for Biden, who pulled US troops from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to reassert complete control of the country. He also voted in favor of invading Iraq as a US senator.
Here's the full video for those who haven't seen it yet 👇 pic.twitter.com/vqxewKM7CU
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 8, 2024
Joe Biden voted to go to war with Iraq when he was in the Senate. He failed miserably in his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Thirteen military members lost their lives because of Biden's poor decisions.
Robert Gates, Defense Secretary for Barack Obama: “Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” https://t.co/TOncZIcnsH pic.twitter.com/HpJptipF3N
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) May 8, 2024
It is absurd and dangerous for Biden to abandon Israel at this point. Biden is not a serious person. It is all politics all the time with him. All he wants to do is get re-elected and stay in power.
Joe Biden managed to tell another whopper when he told a long, rambling story in Wisconsin about his days in Catholic school. He claimed one of his teachers had been recruited by the Green Bay Packers.
“My theology professor at the Catholic school I went to was a guy named Reilly — last name — and he had been drafted by the Green Bay Packers,” Biden said in Racine, south of Milwaukee.
“And he decided to become a priest before that, so he didn’t go. But every single solitary Monday that Green Bay won, we got the last period of the day off.”
According to Pro Football Reference, the Packers have only drafted a single person with the last name “Riley,” “Reily,” or “Reilly” since the NFL began its annual college draft in 1936.
A simple check showed that Joe fabricated another story, this time to try to find support from Wisconsin sports fans. Is it the dementia or is it a lifetime of being a fabulist? I think it is both.
This rare one-on-one interview with a network anchor shows why Team Biden keeps him away from the media. CNN's ratings are in the dumpster so maybe a large audience didn't see it. Will the Biden-loving media bother to do any fact-checking? Don't hold your breath.
