Joe Biden’s dismal approval numbers have shown no sign of improvement, despite the passage of time since his botched Afghanistan withdrawal. It seems that was the watershed moment that ended the honeymoon period for his young presidency. Between Afghanistan, COVID, and the economy, nothing seems to be working as Biden had hoped or planned.
But when asked about his approval ratings, Jen Psaki came up with her own laughable explanation.
“The President has very tough approval ratings these days,” AFP reporter Sebastian Smith told Psaki. “You might say that they don’t mean anything, but it’s also fair to say the White House, when there are good polls, you — you’ve publicized them. So, what do you make of these really terrible polls? Are they that he’s doing something wrong? Is it just the communication? Or is it he’s doing unpopular things that have to be done? Or something else?”
“Well, look, I would say that this is a really tough time in our country. We’re still battling COVID, and a lot of people thought we’d be through it, including us,” she replied. “And we — because of the rise of the delta variant, because of the fact that even though it was a vaccine that was approved under a Republican administration, even though we now have full FDA approval, and even though it’s widely available across the country, we still have a quarter of the country who have — less than that — 20 percent of the country who’ve decided not to get vaccinated. No question that’s having an impact.”
REPORTER: "What do you make of these really terrible polls?"@PressSec: "This is a really tough time in our country…we still have 20% of the country who've decided not to get vaccinated." pic.twitter.com/1YJCx39J8g
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 8, 2021
So, according to Psaki, Biden’s poor numbers are because 20 percent of the country hasn’t been vaccinated yet? It’s not his fault, it’s the fault of all those people who haven’t been vaccinated. Apparently, they’re sabotaging Joe Biden’s approval ratings.
Psaki added that Biden has said that “the buck stops with him.” This has been Biden’s go-to phrase for pretending to take responsibility for his failures after literally “passing the buck” to anyone and everyone else for causing them. Biden infamously blamed Trump for putting him in the position to withdraw from Afghanistan in the first place, as well as his military advisors for not warning of the potential collapse. These were all lies, of course. Joe Biden broke the agreement with the Taliban negotiated by Trump, and the withdrawal was always dependent upon the Taliban meeting various conditions—which they broke.
Thanks to Joe Biden, “the buck stops here” has gone from a phrase epitomizing presidential leadership to one of presidential culpability. Biden has refused to blame himself for his decisions but pretends to take responsibility for them because he has to by virtue of being president. He’ll spend paragraphs blaming everyone around him, and thinks uttering five words makes it look like he’s espousing presidential leadership. Joe Biden has never accepted the blame for his bad decisions or policy failures. Even CNN’s Jake Tapper called Biden out for his fingerpointing after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. “The president said that the buck stopped with him, but, in fact, this speech was full of finger-pointing and blame, especially for the Afghans… He did not really get into or accept any blame for the catastrophic exit that we have been watching on television for the last several days.”
Jen Psaki herself is no stranger to blaming anyone but Biden. Earlier this month she blamed Trump for Biden’s failure to get COVID under control, even though Biden took office during a sharp decline in COVID cases, claiming “we would have made progress on had the former president actually addressed the pandemic.”
All of this is eerily reminiscent of Barack Obama’s strategy of blaming his failures on George W. Bush. Joe Biden, of course, was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be the adult in the room.
