President Joe Biden has not sat down for a one-on-one media outlet news interview for more than 120 days. His last such interview was back in February with Lester Holt of NBC News. All told, President Biden has given far fewer one-on-one media interviews up to this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors.
The Biden White House communications folks thought they had a solution. They booked him for an appearance June 8th on Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC late-night comedy talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. But the president could not even get through that lovefest with Kimmel, a left-wing Biden admirer, without embarrassing himself and his office.
Jimmy Kimmel set the tone with his cringe-worthy introduction of President Biden:
“Our very special guest tonight is to aviator sunglasses, what Tom Cruise is to aviator sunglasses. I’m proud to say I voted for him dozens of times.”
After President Biden and Jimmy Kimmel flattered each other and mocked Fox News, the two instant friends got down to business. But far from asking the “serious questions” that Kimmel promised, Kimmel threw softballs and Biden responded with canned answers.
Jimmy Kimmel made no attempt to probe the president’s policies, their rationales, or their effects on the American people.
The Biden White House team could not have picked a better TV venue for President Biden to appear while hiding from any real questions.
Kimmel’s first question concerned gun violence:
“We were here in September of 2019, and one of the things we talked about at length was gun violence. And you said that we need to do something about this gun violence, particularly when it comes to our schools. And here we are, a couple years later, we’re halfway through this year already, there have been what, 27 shootings at schools? But just to get into it, why haven’t we done anything about this?”
President Biden predictably blamed the National Rifle Association and the “MAGA” Republicans.
Then Kimmel parroted President Biden’s “hard right” description for the Republican Party with a loaded statement of his own: “It seems like maybe the party has moved hard right, but I don’t know that the people have moved hard right,” Kimmel said.
President Biden and Jimmy Kimmel both agreed with the claim that the Republicans do not play by the rules.
“If we do the same thing they do, our democracy will literally be in jeopardy,” the president said. “It’s not a joke.”
Less than a minute later, Biden responded with a crude joke to Kimmel’s use of the Monopoly game as an analogy to ask how you can make progress if a player does not follow the rules. Biden quipped, “We got to send them to jail. There’s that little box, ‘Directly to jail.’”
Kimmel smiled broadly and then paused for a break.
Although the Democrats control the White House, the House of Representative, and the evenly divided Senate where Vice President Kamala Harris has the tie breaking vote, President Biden still complained.
“But we only have 50, and you can’t get even two, three, four Republicans to vote,” Biden whined about the Senate.
Jimmy Kimmel commiserated with the president that two of the Senate Democrats – Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – were “iffy, I think, at best.”
Turning to the economy, President Biden was in full-on spin mode. He boasted that on his watch the U.S. has “the fastest growing economy in the world, the world, the world.” Even CNN could not defend that bogus claim.
“Biden’s claim is false,” CNN reported. “The US economy grew by 5.7% in 2021, but more than 50 other countries had faster growth that year, figures published by the International Monetary Fund show; many of them are small or developing countries, but some of them are large or wealthy. In addition, the US economy shrank in the first quarter of 2022, while various other countries experienced growth.”
President Biden conceded that “inflation is the bane of our existence” but took no responsibility for the scourge of inflation felt so keenly by the American people. Kimmel joked that if Donald Trump left President Biden one of Trump’s Sharpies, perhaps Biden could change the price on items like food and gasoline at the pump.
President Biden took aim at his usual bogeymen such as oil companies, whom he blamed for higher oil prices, and wealthy corporations who, he falsely claimed, are not paying “a penny in taxes, not a penny.”
The problem that President Biden said he faces is being able “to get the message across in a way that is understandable to people like the folks in my family, when we grew up, tell people just what the facts are.”
Most Americans know what the real facts are about the dire state of the economy caused primarily by President Biden’s disastrous policies. They are not fooled by the president’s Panglossian confidence that the economy is in decent shape.
But Jimmy Kimmel dutifully agreed with everything that President Biden said.
” It all makes perfect sense,” Kimmel declared before condescendingly opining “that maybe it’s just that Americans aren’t as knowledgeable as they should be.”
Alternatively, Kimmel surmised that perhaps “there’s a Death Star pumping false information into our brain.”
“ Fox, right?” Biden snarked.
“Yeah,” Kimmel replied. “Or maybe it’s always been this way.” He added, “I think you need to start yelling at people is really what I think.”
Hollywood elitists like Jimmy Kimmel tell us too often what they think on public policy issues they know little about. As for President Biden, he already does a lot of yelling, although at times he leans forward and creepily whispers into the mike to supposedly make a point.
During the 23-minute infomercial for Joe Biden on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the president issued a solemn warning that overturning Roe v. Wade, followed by more restrictive regulation of abortion in some states, will “cause a mini revolution.” Incredibly, he made this inflammatory remark during the show’s taping, which occurred hours after an armed man who set out to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home that same morning.
President Biden said not a word himself on camera about the assassination threat when he had a chance to do so on a popular nighttime television show or during the days that followed. Instead, Biden raised the specter of a “mini revolution.” The president left it up to the White House communications team to condemn in his name the imminent threat of violence against a Supreme Court justice by a man lurking near the justice’s home.
After this farcical infomercial for President Biden on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, will Biden follow up with appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Stay tuned.
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