Biden: My priority is to fight inflation 1:18
(CNN Business) ––
President Joe Biden has granted very few interviews this year, which makes his half-hour conversation with Josh Boak, an Associated Press reporter for the White House, even more relevant.
Fortunately, AP released the full interview transcript.
These are 9 ideas about the Biden presidency that the dialogue in front of cameras revealed:
>> Biden acknowledged that gasoline prices are crucial: "If you want a direct barometer of what people are going to talk about...and if things are going well, that's the cost of food and the cost of gasoline in the service station. I literally mean the gas station."
ANALYSIS |
Why inflation is so painful for Americans and a political nightmare for Biden
>> When Boak pointed out that "Republicans right now are telling voters that inflation started with their covid-19 aid package," Biden replied that there is "zero proof of that."
He also argued that "the idea that (the package) caused inflation is strange."
(In this detailed CNN Business story, Allison Morrow notes that "it's true that government spending drives up inflation," but noted that it's complicated and that there are many other factors at play.)
>> Boak's main story after the interview began with this quote from Biden: "People are really, really down. They're really down."
The president said it in the context of covid-19.
He indicated that he believes people "vastly underestimate" the impact of school closures and other disruptions caused by Covid-19.
"Think of it across the board," he said.
"How isolated we have become. How separated we are," he completed.
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Biden says extraordinary progress has been made in the economy and that "it will be seen once global inflation starts to recede"
>> Biden cited "overwhelming evidence" about the impacts of the pandemic "on the psyche," including the deaths of so many people.
"So she's talking about a country that has suffered deep psychological trauma," Boak said.
"Yes," Biden replied.
"What can you do as president?" Boak began to ask, "to address that psychology."
And Biden responded mid-sentence: "Be confident."
>> Biden also spoke of the psychology of the country when referring to climate change: "You have the tundra melting. We have the North Pole, I mean, so people look at that and I think it's totally understandable that they are worried because they look around and they say 'My God, everything is changing'. We have more hurricanes and tornadoes, floods".
He then he mentioned what happened this week in Yellowstone.
>> The president alluded on some occasions to the media he consumes.
He mentioned videos early in the pandemic showing lines of cars waiting to receive food donations.
He said the "MAGA (Make America Great Again) party" tries to "pass me off as a socialist."
And he cited a positive article, apparently about his desk, from
The New York Times
magazine .
They're 'hearsay,' says White House on reports of concerns about Biden's re-election
>> Do you have Donald Trump in mind?
The funniest part of the transcript was when Biden called Boak a "young man."
Boak said, "I feel like I'm getting more gray every day, sir."
And Biden replied, "Well, I'll tell you what, at least you have hair. I'd settle for orange if I had more hair."
>> Biden mentioned on his own the imminent ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice on abortion and then returned to refer to the subject.
"Even people who are not in favor of abortion rights will find it very, very, out of character when a woman crosses state lines and gets arrested because of where she goes."
>> At the end, when Biden criticized Republicans for being "out of the mainstream of where the public is," he said, "I knew I was facing a tough time, but can I say something off the record?"
So anyone can guess what he said then.
Read the rest of the transcript here...
Will there be more interviews?
This is the first interview Biden has given to the AP so far during his presidency.
(Many other major US media outlets have yet to get one.)
Reporters referred to the questions and answers as "unusual" and barely concealed their hopes that the president would speak more often.
When I asked the White House what this interview revealed about Biden's broader media strategy, they gave me nothing definitive.
CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote earlier this month about the administration's problems with messaging.
Biden complimented Boak during the meeting, saying, "I'm impressed by his objectivity, how he writes," so perhaps the president's readings led to the interview.
I'll ask AP Executive Editor Julie Pace when she joins me on "Reliable Sources..." this Sunday.
Other readings
-- "Joe Biden should not run for re-election in 2024. He is too old."
Thus begins the most recent piece by Mark Leibovich for
The Atlantic
newspaper .
Read the rest and see if you're convinced.
-- Interesting take: Biden's world believes "we won the battle against covid-19 and lost the political war," writes Adam Cancryn in
Politico
, as "the nation now turns to abortion, inflation and guns ...".
-- Max Tani and Alex Thompson describe how the White House works "behind the scenes to get more of their perspective on the Fox website...".
-- This Friday is the 50th anniversary of the Watergate scandal.
The Washington Post
has a special section online for the coverage.
-- It is the differences between then and now, not the similarities, that are most noticeable.
As former editor Donald E. Graham wrote in this retrospective, if the phrase "fake news" had existed in 1972, "the Nixon people would have used it with gratitude..."
-- James Hamblin joked Thursday: "The January 6 hearings are like Watergate, but only if dozens of employees would have testified that the president told them to break into Watergate...then publicly shamed his vice president for not breaking into Watergate." ...then insisted that breaking into Watergate was very good...".
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