'The Country Is in a Bad Place': Dem Sees USA Suffering but Hides the Fact That Biden Is to Blame
The Biden presidency is crashing — but it’s not Joe Biden’s fault.
So indicated Rep. James Clyburn, a man largely responsible for putting Biden in the White House.
The South Carolina Democrat’s endorsement of Biden in his state’s “Super Tuesday” primary was key to Biden pulling ahead to eventually reach the Democratic nomination and somehow become president.
Clyburn, the House majority whip, told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that “the country’s in a bad place,” and as Clyburn outlined what the problems are, he was careful to not place the blame where we know it belongs.
“It’s a real tough time to become president of the United States,” the congressman explained.
Right. As if it wasn’t when Donald Trump inherited the anti-Americanism of Barack Obama or when Ronald Reagan took over Jimmy Carter’s mess. (Some jokester has noted we’re one bad disco tune away from the stagflation of the late 1970s Carter years.)
And to be fair and bipartisan, Franklin Roosevelt had a depression and world war to deal with.
So Uncle Joe has problems with high fuel costs (apparently self-made, of course, through canceling U.S. energy independence), the border crisis, foreign relations (abandoning Afghanistan, including Americans trapped there), a declining military (China’s communists build up theirs while ours is concerned with social justice and transgenderism), inflation and shortages caused by a disrupted supply chain.
With ports clogged, shelves emptying and prices going up, Biden and his people don’t have a clue of what to do.
And then there’s COVID, which Clyburn sees as a major problem.
“We have a pandemic,” he told Wallace. “I happen to chair the select subcommittee on the coronavirus, and I can tell you, you’d be surprised that how much went wrong with trying to combat this virus and that put everybody in a pretty bad way.
“Education is being called into question because kids are out of school … people out of work, and now we’re trying to bring the economy back and we’ve got all of these other things happening. So the country’s in a bad place.”
Responding, Wallace somewhat brushed that aside, noting people looked to Biden with high expectations.
“I think when he was elected people thought he’s going to be a centrist, he’s going to be relatively moderate, he’s going to be competent, and all of that’s been called into question now,” the Fox News host said.
But Clyburn again excused Biden.
“You’ve got a 50-50 Senate – exactly 50-50 – it’s nearly 50-50 [in the] House: We’ve got a three-vote margin,” the congressman said.
“And so that kind of thing will cause you to have to cater to one or two people,” he said. “And we’ve seen what has happened – we’re trying to pull together this so-called Build Back Better legislation.
“Now, everybody agreed on infrastructure – you can always agree on whether or not to build the roads and bridges and create the water and sewage that you need and fix your rail and your ports.
“But it’s something else again when you start getting into new stuff, like broadband, like affordable housing. All of these are infrastructure issues, but they’re not traditional infrastructure issues, and so this kind of transition has got to be made, and whoever is making it will have the headwinds to deal with.”
And so it went, with Clyburn lamenting the country’s problems but never putting them on Joe Biden.
Just the opposite of the plaque President Harry Truman had in the Oval Office: “The buck stops here.”
There was an irony in the Fox News segment. Clyburn was there along with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming as recipients, along with Wallace, of an award for loyalty to country over party, presented by the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, which was founded by Obama administration Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
There wasn’t much evidence of Clyburn putting country over party in steering clear of criticizing Biden. Cheney was receiving the award for her support of the Soviet-style probe of the Jan. 6 incursion at the Capitol.
Loyalty to country, indeed.
Meanwhile, Biden’s approval ratings are at 40 percent or lower. Which raises a question — given the disasters of the relatively new presidency, how in the world can 40 percent of those polled still support the guy?
I guess we’ll have to ask Rep. James Clyburn.
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