Last week, as Townhall covered at length, NBC News went after President Joe Biden for his low approval ratings, and went after him hard. “Inside a Biden White House adrift,” was the piece’s headline, as it highlighted how “rattled” the president is. It was quite the deep dive effort, with four different writers and two additional contributors. That wasn’t the only hit piece from a mainstream media outlet, it turned out. As I also highlighted last week, POLITICO mocked Biden’s response on inflation. At least two other sites went after Biden as well, including The Washington Post and CNN.
On May 31, the same day as that NBC News report went out, The Washington Post published “White House scrambles on inflation after Biden complains to aides” by Tyler Pager and Jeff Stein.
The particularly long piece spend much time pointing out Biden’s frustrations and even criticizing this White House’s response:
The flurry of activity comes after Biden has privately grumbled to top White House officials over the administration’s handling of inflation, expressing frustration over the past several months that aides were not doing enough to confront the problem directly, two people familiar with the president’s comments said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The flurry of moves reflects a new urgency within the White House as it grapples with the growing likelihood that high inflation will extend through the midterm elections, eclipsing Biden’s agenda and undermining his ability to tout his accomplishments — and that there may be little Biden can do about it.
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The White House has also stressed all the ways the American economy is quickly rebounding, as the unemployment rate plummets and gross domestic product surges. But that, too, is a tricky message, as the administration tries to simultaneously celebrate a booming economy and acknowledge that people are suffering.
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The White House messaging has also been inconsistent in part because its attention has been seized by such powerful events as Russia’s aggression and a pair of horrific gun massacres. Yet unrelenting inflation threatens to undermine a central part of Biden’s political identity — that he knows and understands the problems of working-class Americans.
The piece’s focus, as the title suggests, also focuses considerably on inflation:
While the Biden administration may just now be trying to move ahead with a proper response on handling inflation and the economy, they’re still handling it quite poorly. And, Democrats are still likely headed for disastrous midterm elections, to put it politely.
Things continue to go worse for Biden, including and especially in the polls. As Leah and I have highlighted, Biden is none too pleased to be facing lower approval ratings than his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.