After spending the longest amount of time without a press conference, Joe Biden finally went toe-to-toe with the press Wednesday and it was a disaster for all of us.
Biden had gone 300 days since standing before the press corps and taking spontaneous questions. This has been the longest presser dry spell in recent presidential history. But the gathering didn’t do any of us much good because it only tended to reinforce the worry that Biden is not up to the job of being president in these troubled times.
Even in front of a compliant press corps, after his canned remarks, he wasn’t able to clearly answer most of the rather softball questions put to him by the press. Worse, he lied over and over again.
Just to name a few instances:
- Biden lied when he said that very few schools are closed because of the virus right now. This is simply not true. Right now, there are multiple school districts in every state that are back to remote learning and blaming it on the omicron variant.
- Foreign policy-wise, Biden seems to have given up on Ukraine. At one point he said that Putin “will move in.” That just signaled to Putin that Biden is resigned allowing an invasion of Ukraine. But even worse, he said that there won’t be any U.S. response at all unless it is a full-on invasion. Biden just gave away the store! He just told Putin that if he keeps his theft of Ukrainian territory small, and incremental, the U.S. will ignore it. This is a disaster for US foreign policy and for freedom in Ukraine.
- Biden also lied about COVID testing. He said he’s doing a marvelous job on it. But he has done practically nothing so far despite claiming it was a priority when he ran for office.
- Amusingly, he said he wants to “get out” of the White House more often. But he has already spent 40% of his first year on vacation in Delaware and elsewhere since taking office. How much more “getting out” of the White House can he do?
- Biden then lied saying that he didn’t call people who oppose his voting rights push a bunch of racists. During his speech in Atlanta, he absolutely did say that the people who oppose him are racists. He said if you don’t support his plan you are either with Martin Luther King and John Lewis — two personages thought to be civil rights leaders — or you are with notorious racists George Wallace and Bull Conner. That is pretty clear.
- Biden seemed to hint that he thinks the 2022 election “might be illegitimate” unless his voting rights bill is passed ahead of it. He’s already illegitimizing an election that hasn’t even happened.
- Hilariously, he said he has outperformed what anyone expected of him for the first year. And yet, polling about his job approval is as low, or nearly as low as Trump’s worst ratings. If Joe is doing so great, why is his approval rating as bad as a president that he has called the worst in history?
But I think the funniest thing he said that even though Trump is out of office, he has the power to rule the entire Republican Party and that control has stymied Biden’s legislative agenda. So, did Joe Biden just tell us that Donald Trump out of office is more powerful than Joe Biden IN office?
This was a terrible presser. Just disastrous.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.
Tags: Joe Biden media bias
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