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In a private lunch, fmr Pres. Bill Clinton urged Biden to take credit if inflation decreases: WaPo report

August 11, 2022 | | Print Article

In case you were wondering who is advising President Joe Biden on his disastrous policies and blatantly false claims, former President Bill Clinton reportedly urged Biden to take the credit should inflation begin to fall.

According to The Washington Post, Clinton joined Biden for a private lunch in May, during which the former president advised Biden on a number of topics, including the upcoming midterm elections and how to navigate his way through the political minefield that is soaring inflation.

Speaking under the belief that price pressures would let up in the weeks leading up to the midterms, Clinton advised Biden to put himself in a position to claim the credit should the prediction pan out, sources familiar with the exchange told The Post.

Clinton also reportedly praised Biden for creating a multinational coalition in support of Ukraine and told him he needed to craft a policy that would stand in stark contrast to the proposals of Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who, according to The Post, “had proposed a five-year sunset on all federal laws, including Social Security and Medicare, and tax increases on many Americans who are not working.”

Soon after came Biden’s “ultra MAGA” attacks on conservatives — a position The Post notes Biden was already planning to take.

Clinton is just one of many questionable sources from whom the president is reportedly seeking advice.

According to The Post, meetings with outside advisors “have come as Biden faces the isolation that is endemic to presidency, a problem that some Democrats say has been worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, which restricted visitors through much of the first year of his presidency, and by the insular quality of Biden’s inner circle, made up of staffers who have worked with him for decades.”

And, says a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who served under President Barack Obama and, along with other “experts,” had briefed Biden prior to meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva in 2021, prior to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the meetings aren’t a sign that Biden isn’t calling the policy shots — they signal the current president’s strategic superiority.

“They get out of their bubble,” said Michael McFaul of the experts with whom Biden consults. “I worked at the White House for three years before going to Moscow, and comparatively I think they do that in a much more strategic way than we used to do in the Obama administration. It feels that they are more engaged.”

Far from being semi-comatose and confused by his surroundings, WaPo reveals in its article just how actively engaged the president enjoys spending hours questioning experts to arrive at “out-of-the-box” solutions to the problems that have been thrown at him since taking office.

Analyst Ian Bremmer was part of a group that met with Biden to discuss Ukraine earlier this year.

“They really wanted outside-the-box thinking of, is there any way that this war, which will be horrible for everyone involved, can be stopped? Can we stop it? How can we stop it?” Bremmer said. “All of my interactions [with the White House] in the last few years have been uniformly open, constructive and really wanting to get my best sense of where they’re getting it right and where they’re not.”

Procuring the input of outside sources is a priority of Biden’s.

In January, Biden stated as much and added he would be seeking more advice from “academia, editorial writers, think tanks and other outside experts,” The Post reports.

“Seeking more input, more information, more constructive criticism about what I should and shouldn’t be doing,” Biden told reporters.

Most recently, on August 4, Biden gathered with a group of presidential historians that included one of his speechwriters, Jon Meacham, journalist Anne Applebaum, Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, University of Virginia historian Allida Black, presidential historian Michael Beschloss, White House senior adviser Anita Dunn, and head speechwriter Vinay Reddy.

Biden, who was still isolated following a positive COVID-19 test, attended the White House meeting virtually from two floors up in the Treaty Room, part of the White House residence.

The gathering discussed the similarities between now and the period leading up to World War II “when growing authoritarianism abroad found its disturbing echo in the United States,” The Post reports.  –

Melissa Fine
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