This week’s White House report card finds President Joe Biden caught up in questions about using expensive military missiles to shoot down toy balloons and ignoring the escalating environmental crisis in East Palestine, Ohio.
The president and his administration have been slow to respond to the twin issues, with Biden just late this week telling the public what he knew about the Chinese spy balloon and others floating over the U.S. And there are calls for the firing of his inattentive Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg over the chemical train wreck and fire in Ohio.
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It was also another week of not-so-great economic news. Producer prices surged more than expected, and households will feel that pain soon, and the government confirmed that the deficit has grown under Biden, not shrunk as the president claimed.
Conservative grader Jed Babbin rolled out another “F,” noting one of the president’s now infamous slurs that the media likes to ignore. Democratic pollster John Zogby was not available, but it is likely that he would have noted the emergence of a couple of national polls showing Biden edging former President Donald Trump in 2024 head-to-heads.
Jed Babbin
Grade: F
It was a very busy week for President Joe Biden and his crew, mostly focused on the four balloons — at least one of which was a Chinese spy operation — that were shot down over the past two weeks. Biden also made a bit of news by calling Maryland’s first black governor “boy,” selling more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and watching inflation accelerate in January.
Biden finally spoke about the balloons on Thursday to a limited number of reporters who were “pre-credentialed” so that Biden’s press team could weed out anyone from conservative media outlets. He said that the last three balloons weren’t from China but were shot down because he wanted to approach the issue with an abundance of caution. That caution extends — according to Vice President Kamala Harris — to thinking that the spy balloon shouldn’t impact U.S.-China relations. Really? China accused us of being “trigger happy” and refused a call from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. So much for diplomacy. Biden should have, at the very least, said that we don’t need anyone’s permission to shoot down any aircraft that enters our airspace without authorization.
Biden also announced that he was selling off another 26 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. When Biden came into office, the SPR held about 638 million barrels of oil. This new sale will take the SPR to under 350 million barrels, too low to sustain us against another oil embargo or in wartime. It’s just another political ploy to control gasoline prices, but his latest sale may well be to the Chinese because there’s no law requiring only the domestic sales of SPR oil.
To top it all off, on Wednesday, speaking to a labor group about Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Biden said, “He’s the real deal, and the boy looked like he could still play. He got some guns on him.” To say the least, calling a black man “boy” is an intolerable racial slur. If a Republican made such a remark, the media would be covering it 24/7, with every reporter spitting blood and demanding the Republican be imprisoned and driven out of politics. But Biden goes on and on and on.
Biden’s medical exam revealed that he was a “vigorous” 80-year-old capable of continuing the presidency. Noticeably absent was any result of testing his mental capacity.
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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
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and managing partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies
