Biden spoke — on and off — for 112 minutes. I pulled out the seven most important lines from what he said. They’re below.
1. “I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.”
Biden took umbrage at the suggestion that he had bitten off more than he could chew, legislatively speaking. And he took a page from his predecessor’s playbook by bragging that he had done better than anyone expected. That’s a debatable contention. He was able to get a Covid stimulus bill and an infrastructure package through Congress and into law. But his Build Back Better Act is languishing and any major voting rights legislation seems a far way off.
2. “We’re not going back to shutting down schools. Schools should stay open.”
Biden spent the first 15 minutes of the presser delivering a speech — much of it centered on his administration’s response to the Covid pandemic. The fundamental message was this: We are not going back to where we were when he took office — and we don’t need to. His assertion that schools need to stay open was the newsiest bit of that promise — and one that should have appeal across party lines.
3. “I am confident we can get big chunks, big pieces, of Build Back Better signed into law.”
There are two important things happening here: a) Biden admitting that his BBB bill isn’t going to pass and b) endorsing the carving up of the legislation to get some of the more popular pieces of it approved. That’s a strategy that acknowledges the political reality that Democrats badly need a legislative win on his domestic agenda and that his long-held hopes for BBB to pass in its entirety are now dashed. “It’s clear to me that we are going to have to, probably, break it up,” Biden said later of the bill.
4. “I’m not so sure [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is certain what he is going to do. My guess is he will move in [to Ukraine]. He has to do something.”
This was a WOW moment for anyone with even a passing knowledge of the current situation…
Source : cnn
