Biden’s first big speech to Congress bombs on all counts

 By Post Editorial Board | New York Post

President Biden’s speech Wednesday night failed on all counts: It didn’t sell his latest spending plan, it didn’t sell his larger agenda — and, worst of all, it didn’t sell him.

President Joe Biden makes his first joint address to Congress on April 28, 2021.Bloomberg via Getty Images

Start with the utterly bizarre “mask theater.” All the politicians in the room have been fully vaccinated, and Biden’s own CDC says that’s enough. So why the universal masking, and the social distancing? The message, cutting across the president’s occasional optimism, was that this nightmare will never end — which simply isn’t true.

President Joe Biden’s socially distanced first speech to Congress on April 28, 2021.Bloomberg via Getty Images

 Equally, obviously false was Biden’s now-routine effort to claim all the credit for successful vaccinations: All that was set in motion before he took office.

Then he moved into a series of disjointed claims about his “American Families Plan” that barely tracked, even though he was reading a prepared text.

President Biden’s speech was mixed with lies and empty rhetoric.

It seemed like he was just skipping whole paragraphs and even pages. You could see even Democrats wincing above their masks.

He tossed in a few blatant whoppers, like his repeated claims that economists “left, right and center” agree his program will work just as he says.

Despite being fully vaccinated and socially distanced, Biden insisted on wearing a mask.

Oh, and a classic Biden non sequitur, attacking those who oppose his plans to hike taxes on the rich: “Ask them, whose taxes are you going to raise?”

“No one’s” is the answer — because the opposition isn’t looking to spend trillions more than the feds already do.

Yet he never gave any clear unifying theme for the “families” plan, because it doesn’t have one. It’s just another grab bag of items off Democrats’ wish list.

President Biden attempted to take all the credit for the vaccination program, which was put in place by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Then, bizarrely, he wandered into something like a State of the Union speech, ticking off mostly vacuous sales pitches for a host of bills he’d like Congress to pass.

Mixed in were lies about how he’d solved the border crisis as vice president, plus vague waves at a foreign policy (and trade: He talks “buy American” as much as the guy he replaced) and some noise about being tough militarily when the Defense Department is about the only federal agency he doesn’t want to spend more on.

The speech left many Republicans and even some Democrats wincing.

The speech was packed with hoary clichés and empty rhetoric about unity, spiced with blather about “white supremacy” and “systemic racism” even as he was insisting (correctly) that nearly all cops only work hard to protect the public.

After all that, his effort to close with the traditional message of hope fell pretty flat, because he was out to show confidence in America after failing to give America reason to have much confidence in him.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/29/bidens-first-big-speech-to-congress-bombs-on-all-counts/

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RELATED ARTICLE

‘What About 9/11?’ Twitter Ridicules Joe Biden After He Calls Capitol Storming The ‘Worst Attack On Our Democracy Since The Civil War’ In First Address To Congress

 

Joe Biden said during his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening that the Capitol storming on January 6 was the ‘worst attack’ on democracy since the Civil War.

The claim immediately led to major backlash, especially from those on right-wing Twitter, who pointed to a slew of other tragedies in America between the 1860s and 2021 – like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, Pearl Harbor, presidential assassinations and others.

‘January 6 was worse than 9/11? Or Pearl Harbor?’ Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and former attorney wrote in a Twitter thread.

‘Or the Oklahoma City bombing? Or the dismantling of civil liberties in the name of the Cold War and War on Terror? Or the mass surveillance program secretly and illegally implemented by NSA aimed at US citzens (sic)?’ he continued, calling the president a ‘drama queen’ for hyperbolizing the January 6 riots.

‘How about the War on Drugs, mass incarceration and Jim Crow?’ Greenwald quipped. ‘Were those worse ‘attacks on democracy’ than the 3-hour Capitol riot on Jan. 6?’

‘The assassination of JFK? The interference in domestic politics by the CIA? The list of worse attacks than Jan. 6 is endless,’ he concluded.

– Read more at the Daily Mail

https://www.gopusa.com/?p=109640?omhide=true