President Biden will read a carefully prepared State of the Union Speech on Tuesday night in front of a newly divided Congress, where he’s likely to tout last week’s jobs report, and use it as a soft launch for his 2024 reelection campaign despite the fact that a majority of Democrats who don’t want him to run again.
Biden will likely argue that Americans are doing better on average than when he took office, and falsely claim that inflation isn’t his fault.
BIDEN SAYS HE TAKES NO BLAME FOR INFLATION
BIDEN SAYS INFLATION WAS THERE WHEN HE ARRIVED
Green light to raising inflation target: it was Trump’s fault
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 3, 2023
“Do I take any blame for inflation? No,” Biden said Friday. “Because it was already there when I got here, man. … Jobs were hemorrhaging, inflation was rising, we weren’t manufacturing a damn thing here, we were in real economic difficultly, that’s why I don’t.”
Except… inflation was 1.4% when Biden took office.
Even The Hill notes that “there are signs that even a productive past year that featured major investments in the economy and declining concerns about a recession may not be enough for Biden to excite even some in his own party about a 2024 bid.“
“I think this is an impossible speech to give because it’s a speech that requires him to speak both about the state of the union as it is and the direction he hopes to lead it, which is about playing the role of statesman. But it also is going to lay the groundwork for most likely his own run for office in 2024, which will call for him to be decidedly political and to cover all kinds of ground,” said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
What else will Biden say?
Biden will likely call on Congress to raise the debt limit without conditions, challenging Republicans to send him a ‘clean’ bill, while warning against cuts to Social Security and Medicare – cuts which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy already said were off the table.
He will undoubtedly mention the war in Ukraine, framing it as a broader fight against Russian aggression. Some foreign policy experts have suggested Biden may use the speech to lay out a possible roadmap to ending US involvement in Ukraine, The Hill reports.
Biden may also call for police reform following the beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police – which was widely framed as an issue of white supremacy, despite involving only black officers, working for a black Chief of Police, and a black suspect. Nichols, 29, died in a hospital on Jan. 10, three days after he was beaten by the five officers – who have all been hit with several charges.
He may also encourage lawmakers to strike a bipartisan immigration deal after his administration spent the last two years encouraging unchecked illegal migration into the United States.
What won’t Biden mention?
Unless his doctors failed to dial in his cocktail, Biden probably won’t touch on his classified document scandal, the Hunter Biden investigations, or the removal of several Democrats – including Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Ilhan Omar, from prominent Congressional committees.
We also don’t imagine he’ll mention the embarrassing Chinese spy balloon he let traverse the entire United States before shooting down.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/07/2023 – 14:00
