In case you missed it last night, and you probably did, President Biden held an overly rehearsed and controlled Town Hall event on CNN Thursday night. The host, Anderson Cooper, is a professional when it comes to smoothing over Biden’s bad answers and forgetfulness and last night was no different. On many topics, the answers provided by the President were sometimes incoherent or just plain wrong when comes to providing solutions and leadership for the country.
Here’s a rundown of some of the worst moments from Joe Biden’s CNN Town Hall on Thursday night.
Covid Vaccine Mandates
On the question of vaccine mandates, Biden mocked Americans as having the “freedom to kill you with my Covid” for choosing not to receive a Covid-19 vaccination:
Biden mocks people who he says are making the COVID vaccine "a political issue":
"Freedom? I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID? No, I mean come on. Freedom." pic.twitter.com/Jt7uzxTFAc
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 22, 2021
Astonishing that an elected official would not offer any understanding of accommodations, which are provided by law, for medical or religious reasons not to be vaccinated. Instead, says the President, you must enjoy killing people with your Covid. Never mind the thousands of breakthrough cases among the vaccinated population, those cases are fine.
Border Crisis
Regarding the ongoing crisis at the U.S. southern border, where Biden’s lax policies are letting thousands of migrants flow into the country unchecked, another flippant answer. Biden has been to the border before, he says, so what’s the point of even talking about this?
CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “Do you have plans to visit the southern border?”
Joe Biden: “I’ve been there before.”
REALITY: According to Fox News, there is NO EVIDENCE Biden has EVER been to the border as president, VP, Senator, or as a concerned citizen.
pic.twitter.com/i0RfyBKAzj— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 22, 2021
Right, he’s been there before, he saw it once, why are you even asking? Vice President Harris is taking care of it, she’s also been to a border before, just not the one between the United States and Mexico.
Supply Chain Problems
Regarding problems with the supply chain and empty store shelves, Biden said the White House has considered calling in the National Guard to drive trucks and move goods from ports of entry.
As of this morning, however, the White House has walked back what Biden said since it has no authority to order the National Guard to do anything:
When Cooper asked for further clarification on whether Biden would want the National Guard to drive trucks, the president said, “The answer is yes, if we can’t move to increase the number of truckers, which we’re in the process of doing.”
After Biden’s comments, a White House official told CNN: “Requesting the use of the National Guard at the state level is under the purview of governors, and we are not actively pursuing the use of the National Guard on a federal level.”
Biden went on to discuss how he has met with Walmart, and other retailers, and has a relationship with many of them. Nothing, however, in Biden’s answers offered hope to solving the supply chain problems or getting the country stocked again. There seems to be very little effort made on the part of the administration to even begin to know how to solve this complex crisis. The Secretary of Transportation has proved to be a joke on the supply chain crisis offering no solutions, only heaps of praise for his boss.
Gas Prices
When questioned about skyrocketing energy prices, Biden admitted he has no short-term answer. So far, his administration has attempted to blame oil companies and scale back domestic energy production, actions which are exacerbating the pain at the pump:
President Biden admitted during a CNN town hall Thursday night that he has no immediate solution to the problem of spiking gas prices and suggested that Americans would not start seeing relief at the pump until next year.
“My guess is, you’ll start to see gas prices come down as we get by and going into the winter – I mean, excuse me, into next year, 2022,” the president told moderator Anderson Cooper at the Baltimore event.
“I don’t see anything that’s going to happen in the meantime that’s going to significantly reduce gas prices.
“I must tell you, I don’t have a near-term answer”
This is a politician who has been in Washington for over forty years. He should know how the energy industry works and know something about energy production. Why would he come into office, kill the Keystone pipeline, start reneging on oil leases, and then act like he’s unaware of how to fix a problem of high gasoline prices? The travesty here is that prices haven’t yet peaked and will continue to rise into the winter months, especially home heating oil which is up over 50% from last winter.
Covid Vaccinations
Biden inexplicably took credit for getting America vaccinated against Covid despite the obvious fact that his moves had nothing to do with Covid-19 vaccine development, he wasn’t President in 2020. Even the Associated Press fact-checked Biden’s claim this morning and called it flat out wrong:
BIDEN: “When I first was elected, there were only 2 million people who had COVID shots in the United States of America — and the vaccine. Now we got 190 million, because I went out and bought everything I could do and buy in sight and it worked.”
THE FACTS: No, that’s not how the vaccine rollout in the U.S. happened. Biden is overstating his part.
First, it’s not true that 2 million people had shots when he was elected in November. The COVID-19 vaccines were still awaiting emergency authorization then. The first shots were administered to the public in mid-December.
Nearly 16 million doses had been administered by Jan. 20, the day Biden took office. And Biden didn’t buy up all the doses — the Trump administration had purchased 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna in December, weeks before Biden was inaugurated.
It’s not surprising to see him stumble over this timeline and his words, he is having trouble remembering things. That’s not a criticism of him, it’s just reality when you listen to him speak and try to explain things. Some of this is rewriting history in his favor, and some of it is just bungling things together into how he wants to portray it. The rest is simply a misstatement of reality.
Democrat Audience
Despite promises that these events are filled with voters of all stripes, the questions always seem one-sided and incredibly planned. This was the case last night, as it has been revealed that the questions came overwhelmingly from Biden’s own base of Democratic voters:
The attendees CNN had participate in its town hall featuring President Biden overwhelmingly skewed in favor of Democrats.
Biden seemed to be in friendly territory as the town hall took place in the heavily liberal city of Baltimore. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who has now moderated his second town hall with the 46th president, asked much of the questions throughout the 90-minute event.
Of the 12 participants who were able to ask questions, seven were identified as Democrats, three were identified as Independents and only two were identified as Republicans.
No one is shocked, right? These events are very controlled, which is why they have sent President Biden out to do several of them. The questions are controlled, the host is there to push and prod Biden along and intervene if things get too off the rails. It’s akin to a staged press conference where the questions are known in advance, the moderator is a referee to help move the ball for Biden, and the audience is there as a prop.
“What am I doing here?”
Hands down, the most searched for gaffe line of the night was when Joe Biden asked “what am I doing here?” when trying to remember the names of two major seaports in relation to a question on the supply chain crisis:
No one really knows what you’re doing there, but there you are. Perhaps this is why Politico recently tried and failed to explain why Biden has done very few interviews or press conferences himself but favors the “town hall” events.
There wasn’t much last night in terms of reassuring the American people that the “adults” are running the show right now. The Biden administration is filled with woke activists, bent on pushing an agenda rather than addressing real issues like the economy or national security. For whatever Biden says, his words don’t match what Americans are seeing every day on the news.
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