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Biden says Americans are ‘really, really down’ and ‘need mental health,’ in big overdue press interview

June 17, 2022 | | Print Article

In President Joe Biden’s first press interview since February, he predictably smeared the Trump administration, accused Americans of not appreciating what’s at stake in Ukraine, refused to accept blame for inflation, denied that a recession is inevitable, and attacked gas/oil producers and big Fortune 500 companies.

His interview with the Associated Press literally began with lies about his predecessor.

“The biggest thing I think that, when I came into this job, that I have the greatest frustration with the last four years, is that, um, everything was constructed and built and arranged in order for the top 1 to 3 percent of the population to do very well. … The rest was sort of, I mean that literally, everything else seemed to be an afterthought,” he said

The data shows that everybody thrived under the Trump administration — men, women, minorities, immigrants, the poor, the middle class, the wealthy, etc.

Later in the interview, the president proceeded to blame the Trump administration for the COVID cases and deaths that have occurred under his administration.

“I think the failure of the last administration to act on COVID had a profound impact on the number of people who got COVID and the number of people who died,” he said.

Yet despite the Biden administration having access to a vaccine developed under the Trump administration, more people died from COVID in the president’s first year in office than died during his predecessor’s final year in office.

Even PolitiFact has admitted this.

After smearing the Trump administration, President Biden moved on to doubting the American people’s intellectual capacity to understand what’s at stake in Ukraine.

Asked specifically whether Americans have a “sense of the stakes,” he replied, “No, I don’t. … I’d say to the American people I’ve done foreign policy my whole career. I’m convinced that if we let Russia roll and Putin roll, he wouldn’t stop.”

Not mentioned by him was that his career is brimming with foreign policy failures. According to Obama-era Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

The president continued by deflecting blame for inflation by falsely claiming there’s “zero evidence” that his exorbitant spending is to blame.

“Zero evidence of that. Zero evidence of that, number one,” he repeated.

He then essentially claimed his economic policies have been a success.

“Number two, we’ve reduced the deficit by $350 billion last year. We reduced the deficit by a trillion … 700 billion this year. We grow the economy. Today, today, we have more people employed than, in a long, long time and we gained another 8.6 million jobs. And guess what? We still have hundreds of thousands of job openings,” he said.

“You could argue whether it had a marginal, minor impact on inflation. I don’t think it did. And most economists do not think it did. But the idea that it caused inflation is bizarre.”

Everything he said was false in one way or another, starting with his inflation denial.

Reason magazine notes that his claim about cutting the deficit was just as false: “The White House’s claims of deficit reduction are not merely ‘misleading’ or ‘actually true…but utterly deceitful’; they are absolutely, definitively false.”

The reason why is because of all of Biden’s spending. While it’s true the deficit went down from 2021 to 2022, it’s poised to rise back up sharply in the coming years precisely because of all of the president’s spending. This is a fact.

Continuing his remarks, the president denied that a recession is inevitable (which may be true), but then turned around and preemptively absolved himself of any blame.

“You talked about a recession. First of all, it´s not inevitable. Secondly, we´re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation. … If it´s my fault, why is it the case in every other major industrial country in the world that inflation is higher? You ask yourself that? I´m not being a wise guy. Someone should ask themself that question. Why? Why is it?” he said.

While it’s true recession isn’t inevitable, every respected analyst believes it’s extremely likely.

“Analysts increasingly see a recession looming in the US following the Federal Reserve’s biggest increase in interest rates since 1994 and signs of weaker consumer spending,” according to a Bloomberg piece published Wednesday.

Secondly, it’s not true that inflation is higher “in every other major industrial country.”

“Last year, businesses around the world started raising prices at a pace not seen in decades. Among major economies, one country was hit the worst – the United States,” the BBC reported earlier this week.

“Prices jumped at an annual rate of 4.7% last year – faster than any other country in the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the UK, for example, inflation was just 2.5%.”

After completely distorting the truth about inflation, Biden predictably finished off the interview by attacking gas/oil producers and Fortune 500 companies with his usual gripes about them earning too much profit and not paying their so-called fair share.

Vivek Saxena
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