This week’s White House Report Card acknowledges the beginning of the fall presidential campaign after President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump took enough delegates during Super Tuesday’s primaries to cement their position as party nominees.
Biden, at 81, would be the oldest president to run for reelection, but at 77, Trump is no spring chicken. And Biden, in his State of the Union address, and Trump in his reaction, both indicated that it will be an angry campaign with both yelling versions of Clint Eastwood’s iconic line in Gran Torino, “Get off my lawn.”
The State of the Union address was overly political, with Biden making repeated references to Trump and issues that have helped Democrats in recent elections, notably abortion.
Conservative analyst Jed Babbin graded Biden an “F” for the week and panned the annual address. Democratic pollster John Zogby graded a “B plus” and gave the speech a thumbs up.
Jed Babbin
Grade: F
In the lead-up to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Thursday night, Biden and Co. blew up any chance of gaining credibility with the SOTU and earned an “F” before the speech.
It was revealed that during 2023, Biden flew at least 320,000 illegal aliens to various places around the country.
Budgeteers calculated that our national debt is increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days thanks to the president’s spending spree.
Biden is selling off our national gasoline reserve (which few even knew we had) to keep gasoline prices people pay artificially depressed throughout the election.
And that’s the good news. The rest is worse and Biden delivered it in an angry, hourlong scold during which he slurred many words.
Biden threatened the Supreme Court, saying they’d suffer the effects of women’s political activism, and promised to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. He said the economy is the envy of the world — and that he’s cut the deficit (see above about our debt), while inflation keeps roaring along at a pace unseen in 40 years.
Biden said that the Republicans were blocking border security which he wants to improve. That’s total BS because he signed more than 90 executive orders opening the border. He could do far more by revoking those EO’s than the bill Republicans are supposedly blocking could do. (See also above on the 320k illegals flown around.)
And there was the standard Biden spiel that corporations should pay their “fair share” of taxes, which he says would be at least 21%. He wants an “assault weapons” ban and universal background checks for gun control. And he still wants to force Israel into a bad “peace” deal with the Hamas terrorists encompassing the “two-state” solution that would be a reward for terrorism.
To top it all off, in an exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Biden mispronounced the name of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student allegedly killed by an illegal migrant.
Replying for the Republicans, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) said it all when she reminded us that Biden had been in public office since before she was born. It’s long past time for someone to push him aside.
John Zogby
Grade: B+
President Joe Biden did what he had to do on Thursday night in his annual State of the Union address. He addressed the most important issue on voters’ minds: is he physically and mentally up to the job. He was on fire. Perhaps a bit hot for a television audience, shouting and all, but he passed his test.
He was in command of the issues, provided an outline of the themes that will form the nucleus of his reelection campaign, and did what he perhaps does best: he took it right to the GOP, chided them, laughed off their shouts, and smiled like the affable Irish politician he is.
Biden took a clear internationalist/interventionist/Cold War position of foreign policy, in sharp contrast to his “predecessor.” I am not sure how that will play out with voters.
He reminded fellow party members that he is a Democrat and laid out before them a smorgasbord of traditional liberal positions. Rather than seek unity to build bridges with the other side, his opening salvo for 2024 was based on the premise that there is very little common ground. So he fought and, like Tom Petty and many before him, he said he “Won’t back down.”
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Some critics suggested that his speech was too political and polemical, but the moment did not call for him to be pusillanimous (lack of courage, timid)! Can he sustain this level of energy? I am not sure anyone can. But speech night belonged to Biden.
And, by the way, 275,000 jobs were created last month.
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 X @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Their firm polls for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies
