This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden stuck where he’s been for months: underwater in the polls, his agenda stalled, the economy showing mixed signals, and his staff at the ready to correct misstatements.
Also, as he spends his 32nd weekend in Delaware, the president is mulling who to name as press secretary after Jen Psaki leaves for MSNBC this spring.
Pollster John Zogby, grading the week a “C,” highlighted the positives in his weekly review, but the bottom line remains that Biden’s approval rating is stuck at 40%.
Conservative analyst Jed Babbin graded an “F” for Biden’s wider opening of the U.S.-Mexico border, misstatements on the war in Ukraine, increasing inflationary pressure, a focus on transgender issues, and the threat that son Hunter Biden’s scandal will hit the Oval Office.
John Zogby
Grade C
Lots of numbers this week and a mass of confusion on how Joe Biden has been doing.
First, the good news for Biden. The unemployment rate is down to 3.6%, a 50-year low, as 428,000 new jobs were created in several key sectors. Wages were up 5.6%, also a healthy number. At the same time, there was good news on the pandemic front as the number of hospitalizations went down dramatically. The president announced this week that he would release 1 million barrels of oil a day from U.S. reserves to provide some limited relief to consumers in time for April and May.
At the same time, inflation remains at a 6.4% annualized rate, offsetting any gain in wages, and consumers tell us in surveys that they plan to spend less. Higher interest rates now and even higher around the corner have economists worried about a recession this year.
Some good news in Ukraine as Russia has pulled back from its aggression in Kyiv and the western and central parts of the country. Ukraine has also launched air attacks inside Russia, just as the president announced that the United States would supply Ukraine with Russian-made bombers.
Possible good news for Biden comes from some trouble in GOP-land, where primaries are becoming nastier in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Missouri as candidates start to channel their inner Will Smith. And then, there is the sad “orgy” saga of the young Rep. Madison Cawthorn. And the president’s approval rating is stuck at around 40%.
Jed Babbin
Grade F
We interrupt our reporting of Vice President Kamala Harris’s incomprehensible speeches to bring you a special report of Biden’s verbal incontinence (a term I borrow from Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker).
In just a few days, the president went off message so crazily (and dangerously) that the cleanup crew of Secretary of State Tony Blinken and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki couldn’t keep up. Biden:
- called for regime change in Moscow by saying Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t remain in power
- said that any Russian chemical weapon attack in Ukraine would be responded to “in kind,” injecting the U.S. and NATO into a general war, and
- told U.S. troops in Poland that they’d see Ukrainians’ bravery “when they get there,” indicating that he was sending them into the war.
The White House spent the week trying to convince everyone that Biden hadn’t said what he clearly said or at least didn’t mean it. Later, Biden’s staff made him refer to cue cards to answer questions in an attempt to keep him out of trouble.
The international corruption involving Biden’s son, Hunter, is becoming clearer almost daily. It’s entirely possible that “The Big Guy” will also become a target of the FBI’s investigation.
Meanwhile, Biden is ordering the release of over 1 million barrels of oil per day from the strategic petroleum reserve to bring gasoline prices down. Why not save the SPR for real emergencies and drill, baby, drill? He also announced more funding for NASA for the purpose of putting a woman or a person of color on the moon.
And Biden is increasing the flow of illegal immigrants by removing the Border Patrol’s authority to deport people suspected of having COVID-19 infections immediately. Meanwhile, U.S. citizens traveling abroad are required to get a negative coronavirus test before being allowed back into their own country. That may make sense on some planet, but not this one.
Last, and least, the Biden regime is enabling people getting U.S. passports to sign up as neither male nor female, just an “X” under gender. That may have been Biden’s proudest moment on Thursday’s “Transgender Visibility Day.” Or maybe it was his administration’s announcement that it endorsed sex-change surgery for adolescents. You can’t make this stuff up, people.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin.
