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Biden Decries Lack of Civility Then Attacks GOP and Insults Americans on ‘Tonight Show’ – Opinion

By Pluralist / December 11, 2021

As we reported yesterday, Joe Biden is being accused of being the “hider-in-chief” and “least accessible” occupant in the White House to the press in recent history.

One of the issues is: Biden has a reluctance to give interviews. Jen Psaki (White House Press Secretary) indicated that Biden was willing to do interviews in order push his agenda three weeks back. But he hasn’t been. As we pointed out, one reason why he isn’t has to do interviews, even with local stations, which he did in November, because he makes problematic comments when giving them interviews. In that local interview, Biden managed to insult Americans by claiming that one of the reasons his poll numbers were low — that Americans weren’t thinking highly of him — was that Americans had “psychological scars” from the pandemic. The problems aren’t his, you’re just confused if you think so.

What can the media do to address this problem?

Biden did an interview with Jimmy Fallon last night on the “Tonight Show.” Let’s face it — no one is going to think that’s anything but a friendly cushy interview, and it was exactly that. It’s not designed to be a tough interview, and it wasn’t.

Fallon did talk about Biden’s approval numbers, but Biden made a joke about it. Joe’s Pro-tip: It’s not funny to joke about Americans being miserable.

Biden claimed that he no longer looked at the polls “anymore.”

Biden claimed that he was paying attention “when they were in the mid-60s, but now that they’re in the 40s, I don’t pay attention.”

That’s a lie on both ends of it. His ratings at the start, for example with FiveThirtyEight and Gallup, were in the 50s, not the “mid-60s” and now they’ve dipped into the 30s, with the lowest being the Quinnipiac poll at 36 percent approval. Part of the problem is exactly what Biden said — he’s ignoring/not paying attention to what Americans are voicing their concerns about, so he’s not changing his policies.

Fallon didn’t question Biden on what he said, he just said he “appreciated his honesty.” “You came in hot and then you got to medium and now you’re at a low,” Fallon exclaimed, saying Biden just had to “keep his head down and keep doing the right thing.” When is Biden going to start doing the “right thing”?

Biden then downplayed the concerns of Americans once again, suggesting that their opinions were informed by “inaccurate information.” It’s our fault that we don’t understand how perfect he is. It’s insulting that he keeps saying things like this.

“They’re being told that Armageddon’s on the way,” Biden said. “The truth is the economy’s grown more than it has any time in close to 60 years, the unemployment rate is down to 4.2 percent — it’s going to go lower, in my view.”

Translation? After the closure of pandemics, people are now returning to work. Trump saw unemployment drop to 3.5% before the pandemic. His evidence does not suggest that inflation will drop anytime soon. In fact, if his Build back Better bill is passed, it could make matters worse. It’s already at historic levels — it surged 6.8 percent, even more than expected, in November to the fastest rate in 39 years.

Fallon praised Biden for bringing “class” back to the office for eulogizing former Sen. Bob Dole. He ignored Biden’s attacks on Republicans during his program. Fallon’s promo should be considered a donation-in-kind to the Democratic Party

Biden decried the lack of civility in politics, but claimed there was still a lot of bipartisanship, “except for the Q-Anon and the extreme elements of the Republican party … it makes it awful hard.” He then claimed President Donald Trump was “feeding” into partisanship. So he attacks Republicans as “extreme,” but he’s the one working for bipartisanship? Is he really listening to his own self-deprecating attacks on Trump over the last two years? Have he even looked at his extreme party recently? Does he simply do the same thing as extremists?

Biden also claimed — falsely — that people (obviously those evil Republicans) were trying to prevent Americans from voting in 30 “cities” (I think he meant states). Talk about being dishonest and promoting division.

Fallon never tried to contradict Biden with facts. Biden was happy with the softball interview he got. Biden still needed to take notecards, even though he gave softball interviews with some highly questionable responses.

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Pluralist

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