President Joe Biden’s approval rating has taken a severe beating these past few months, the natural byproduct of an administration that is as incompetent as it is arrogant.
From the White House’s mishandling of immigration, to its disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, to even the perception the president is honest and competent, the public’s opinion of the 46th commander in chief continues to plummet.
But don’t blame Biden for Biden’s lousy numbers, say the most trusted voices in the media. Perhaps we should blame, er, the media.
“How much should Biden and the people around him be worried about these polling numbers?” asked MSNBC’s Brian Williams.
He continued, “How much of it is the result of really crappy reporting by mainstream news media using kind of false equivalence standards that stopped in 1978, and is as if Donald Trump was never president?”
Now is as good a time as any to remind everyone Williams no longer anchors a chair on network television because he was caught lying about covering active war zones.
At CNN, Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter suggested likewise, that Biden’s underwater polling has something to do with the press being either too aggressive or too careless with coverage of the administration.
“One of the phrases that I always hear [is] ‘Dems in disarray,’” said Stelter, “It’s a meme, it’s a joke, but it’s also said seriously all the time. ‘The Democrats are in disarray.’”
He added, “Is it more accurate to say it’s Congress in disarray? Congress is failing?”
Yes, just ignore the part where Democrats have control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. They’re not flailing and fighting each other. No, their failure is shared somehow with their Republican counterparts.
Stelter’s guest, Atlantic contributor James Fallows, took it a step further, suggesting Republicans, who control neither the House, nor the Senate, nor the White House, are responsible for said “disarray.”
“Congress is in disarray, but Congress is made to be in disarray by one group of congresspeople,” he said, “by the Republicans, who are saying we’re going to use the threat of a filibuster with our minority to hold up this crucial thing for the world’s economy. So, it’s in disarray, but it’s caused disarray, rather than just a naturally occurring phenomenon.”
Are we simply ignoring the part where the Biden administration’s domestic agenda has stalled in Congress because House progressives won’t budge on the Senate’s bill unless their demands are met, while Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have signaled they won’t budge on the House’s demands until the price tag comes down substantially? Apparently!
“[I]f we leave out the cause, then we’re missing this story,” mused Stelter. “We’re missing this story.”
He then played a clip of Biden complaining about the press’s coverage of his presidency.
“Right now,” said the president, “things in Washington, as you all know, are awfully noisy. Turn on the news and every conversation is a confrontation. Every disagreement is a crisis.”
What Biden is actually describing is how the press covered the Trump administration. Remember all those “the walls are closing in,” “Trump is isolated,” “we’ve reached a tipping point,” and “this is the ‘end’ for Trump’” news cycles? How did those work out?
Never mind all that, says Stelter. Let’s talk about how the press are being unfair to Biden.
“Factually speaking, [Biden’s] right there,” said the CNN host, “everything is portrayed as an emergency, even when it’s not.”
Stelter continued, saying, “the idea Biden says every conversation becomes a confrontation. There is some truth to that concern. I’m sure he’s watching and getting frustrated by the coverage of the D.C. budget battle. There is some truth to that.”
The funniest thing about this is not the craven attempt to defend and deflect for the most powerful man in the free world, but the idea the Biden presidency would be awash somehow in positive approval numbers were it not for the press’s coverage of congressional in-fighting over budget and reconciliation bills and not, you know, the broader crises the public was always going to notice regardless of news coverage.
The public was always going to notice higher gas prices. The public was always going to notice soaring inflation, including that it has risen by 5.4% year-over-year to a 13-year high. The public was always going to notice state and local leaders jumping back-and-forth between loosening and then re-enforcing voodoo, placebo COVID-19 preventive measures. The bad polling numbers probably have more to do with soaring costs at the supermarket and less to do with whatever argument the House’s progressive caucus is having with Manchin.
This isn’t frigging Scooby-Doo, where Biden would’ve gotten away with it were it not for those meddling kids in the press. The public was always going to notice the worst aspects of the Biden presidency, from the immigration crisis to soaring inflation, regardless of media coverage.
If you’re looking for someone to blame for the president’s dismal approval rating, maybe look no further than the president.
