President Biden ripped for sudden cancellation of important supply chain speech

Co-hosts of Fox News’ “The Five” ripped into President Biden on Monday after the White House unexpectedly canceled a major speech in which he was expected to discuss the nation’s supply chain crisis.

Biden was scheduled to deliver his remarks Monday afternoon but reports noted that he bailed out about 15 minutes beforehand.

As he introduced the segment, co-host Greg Gutfeld said that the objective of Biden’s speech was twofold: To reassure Americans after meeting with business leaders that the supply chain crisis was being handled, and to provide aid and comfort to restless Democrats who are fearful the issue will add to voters’ growing angst about the economy in general and worsen the party’s prospects during next year’s midterm elections.

He also noted that the White House said the speech has been rescheduled for Wednesday before bringing in co-host Jesse Watters to respond.

“I’m surprised we still have [a supply chain crisis]. Didn’t Joe Biden fix it when he said he was going to keep the ports open?” Watters said, in reference to an earlier pronouncement by the president that ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, two of the country’s busiest, pledged to operate 24 hours a day to clear bottlenecks.

Watters said he “looked into” the situation and found that “one terminal stayed open” 24 hours “for a few days [but] no truckers came by” to be loaded with goods.

“So what did Joe do? Did he solve the trucking issue? No, he slapped vax mandates on truckers — the people that literally don’t come close to anyone…for weeks,” Watters said.

Continuing, Watters said that besides “moving the factories to China,” the situation was made worse by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recommendation early in the pandemic to “shut down the economy.”

“No one’s ever done that in the history of the world,” said the animated co-host, who went on say that passing legislation putting trillions of dollars into the economy as it reopened has contributed to rising inflation, which was akin to taking “a fistful of methamphetamines.”

“You’re more entertaining than drunk history,” Gutfeld quipped.

“That sounded like drunk history,” co-host Geraldo Rivera added.

After Rivera put a better spin on the economy, co-host Dagan McDowell noted that real wages are down 2 percent since the beginning of the year, adding that the inflation seen in the economy now is “an inconvenience” for wealthy Americans, “but for working men and women in this country, it’s a great hardship.”

To Watters’ point regarding truckers, earlier this month reports noted that millions of drivers have threatened to quit over Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“We’ve tried to be very clear to the administration — I understand the logic behind it — but if you do this, these are the consequences,” American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear told a House committee earlier this month.

“So if you’re trying to solve the supply chain problem, you’re actually compounding it and actually hurting the very problem you’re trying to fix,” Spears told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The U.S. has around 80,000 fewer truckers than before the pandemic; if the Biden administration is able to enforce its Jan. 4 vaccine deadline on private businesses with more than 100 employees, then, according to an ATA survey, the trucking industry will lose 37 percent more drivers, or about 2.5 million.

The survey “came back as 37% of drivers not only said ‘no,’ but ‘hell no,’” Spear told lawmakers on the panel. “It’s not about being anti-vax — we’ve been moving the vaccine test kits.”

Jon Dougherty

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