The president is doing a news conference this afternoon, and we are going to ... liveblog it, we guess? Yeah why not. We "love" you, after all.
We got a feeling it's gonna be kind of lit, since journalists are kind of obsessed with throwing both-sides crap at Joe Biden just to prove to each other that they are fair and balanced after four years of Donald Trump.
Also there's that whole thing about how his agenda is kind of stalled, because of these two absolutely worthless shitheel moron Democratic senators whose names we currently forget.
Let's watch together.
4: 02:Oh hey, look at President Mister On-Timey!
He is bragging about vaccinating people and giving them jobs and taking kids out of poverty and creating small businesses and people making more money.
TYRANT COMMIE.
4: 04:Biden says we're removing lead pipes, which is very unfair to anti-vaxxers and Fox News hosts probably, who could theoretically at some point decide "licking lead pipes" is the next thing they should try once they get bored of "horse paste" and "pee."
4: 06:Biden says should we have done more testing before? Sure! But we're doing more now! Go to this website and put your name in and say "I'd like a lot of tests" and they'll say "no you can't have a lot but you can have four."
(That website link is actually to a Wonkette post where we talk about the website where you can get four Covid tests. Do not go to the Wonkette post and put your name in the comments and think you're getting a Covid test care package. You are getting nothing .)
4: 10:Now Biden is talking about his appointees to the Fed's board of governors and stuff. Hey remember when we watched presidential news conferences to see if the president was going to tell people to eat bleach or if he would personally stare directly into the sun?
Fun times.
4: 14: He says the terrible hellscape we now live in isn't the "new normal," but just a job not yet finished.
Joe Biden: "I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now... some people may call what’s happening now the new normal. I call it a job not yet finished."pic.twitter.com/4Je5tTdTO3
— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona) 1642626682
4: 16:And now the first question, and it is "everything sucks now, and we are all gonna die. Did you overpromise to America when you promised everybody blowjobs and candy canes?"
(Paraphrase.)
Biden says he did not overpromise, and we have made enormous progress. Biden says he hasn't been able to get his "Republican friends" to get into the game to try to get things done. Hmmmmmmmmm, it's almost like we were all correct when we said that, love Biden though we might, he was being hopelessly naive when he acted like today's Republicans -- not the Republicans he served with in the Senate, today's Republicans, who are shithole authoritarian fascists -- would actually work with him.
Anyway he's saying he's going to have to change tactics and make clear to Americans what Democrats are for and actually go out and sell what he's accomplished and what he wants to accomplish.
4: 21:Next question: since your entire agenda is being held hostage by these two crapballs losers in your own party -- they're literally about to tank voting rights in like an hour -- should you scale back what you want to accomplish? He says no, but isn't talking about the two crapballs losers.
4: 23:Biden says he's confident that he can still get big pieces of Build Back Better signed into law, and says he hasn't given up on voting rights yet.
4: 25:Journalist accepts Mitt Romney's whining that Joe Biden hasn't called him as a valid criticism as to why Romney hasn't done anything on voting rights. Next question, moving on.
Will the next election be fairly conducted with legitimate results even if voting rights aren't passed? Biden says it will depend on whether the American people realize that some of what Republicans are doing is designed to rig elections in their favor. He says, though, that no matter how hard Republicans make it for minorities to vote, people will show up defiantly. But says it's going to be hard.
4: 28:Biden is calling bullshit on several of these questions. The current one is about alllllll these schools cloooooosing, and Biden was like sorry, I reject your premise, because 95 percent of schools are open, but you wouldn't know that if you were listening to yourself right now.
4: 30:Question about Russia's aggression against Ukraine, etc. Biden says NATO will absolutely be united, and in response to whether sanctions will actually bother Putin, since they haven't historically, Biden says Putin ain't never seen sanctions like the ones they got comin'.
4: 32:"It's like my mother used to say, you bite your nose off to spite your face."
Exactly what our mom always says.
4: 35:Lots of words, but Biden says Putin may have military superiority over Ukraine, but they'll pay so hard in the near term and the long term if they invade Ukraine.
Now we move to David Sanger of the New York Times , who is still on Russia and Ukraine. Does Biden still think the "last thing" Putin wants is a new Cold War, and has Biden's view of Putin changed in the last several months?
Biden says he still thinks Putin doesn't want a full-blown war, but he'll test the US and NATO as much as he can. "He'll pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn't think now will cost him what it's gonna cost him."
Hey remember the last president, whose words to Putin were more along the lines of OMG I LOVE UUUUUUUUUU CAN YOU BE MY REAL FATHER?
Biden is now doing arm-chair psychology about what he thinks Putin really wants in the world, and what Putin really thinks about Russia's current position in the world, from the end of the Soviet Union to now and going forward. Throws cold water on Putin's dream of NATO banning Ukraine for life, but also says some realistic words about how Ukraine's timeline to get into NATO isn't exactly "tomorrow."
4: 40:Can Putin have any of his assurances about US reducing troops in Poland or Romania? No, says Biden. If Putin pulls some shit, he's gonna get more American troops in those places, because of our treaty agreements to defend certain countries.
4: 42:Oh no Joe Biden said Joe Manchin's name out loud,. We are not sure Joe Manchin likes it when the White House says his name out loud in the same sentence as "build" or "back" or "better."
4: 49:Golly, he's still taking questions. This one is about Mitch McConnell saying the midterms are going to be a "report card" for how well Biden is doing. Biden says PFFFFFT MALARKEY, Mitch is just doing his job. That's OK. Biden's a big boy!
He literally said he's a big boy.
4: 50:This is Biden's theme tonight. "What's Mitch for? What's he for on immigration? What's he for on Russia? What are they for?" Says nobody can tell WTF Republicans are for.
Which is fair. They're for stealing democracy for white conservatives, even though a majority of the American people really fuckin' hates them.
Now Biden is talking about Republicans for being scared to do anything on their own, because Donald Trump will sic primary challengers on them.
4: 52:Biden said there were five Republican senators who have told him they would do different things if they weren't being threatened by primaries. Journalist says will you tell us which five? Biden says SURE! But then he says he was kidding.
Oh well.
4: 56:And he's still going! He's signaled that he's willing to look at breaking up the voting rights bills into smaller parts if he has to. Also he says GET YOUR BOOSTER SHOT.
Now he's talking about the notion of splitting NATO, which he says would be a "big mistake." Acknowledges that there are differences among NATO countries when it comes to what level to respond to Russia, depending on the level of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Says he will work to make sure everybody is on the same page when actions are taken.
Hey, remember when the last president tried to literally destroy NATO? That happened.
5: 02:More questions about Russia, more questions about voting rights ... there is a theme here! Kristin Welker from MSNBC speaking to frustrations from Black voters on the Senate's inability to pass voting rights, and people's feelings that Biden hasn't really had their backs.
We do wish he'd just call Manchin and Sinema great big dump-takers, out loud, in their faces.
5: 06:Welker asks if Biden is happy with Vice President Kamala Harris's work on voting rights and whether he'd commit to her being his running mate in 2024. He said, "Yes and yes."
If Welker thought that was gonna be some kind of gotcha, it didn't work.
Now she's asking if he regrets making those comparisons between Republicans and George Wallace and Bull Connor. He's clarifying that what he said was that if you didn't vote for the Voting Rights Act, you were voting with George Wallace. He didn't say Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Marsha Blackburn are literally George Wallace.
No matter how much those people remind us all of George Wallace.
He didn't say that.
5: 10:Biden is trying to close his book, but he's taking one more question on what he's done to make America believe government is more competent again. Blah blah blah blah.
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I cannot possibly be the only one who wants to projectile vomit over that egomaniac Moscow Mitch styling himself "Leader McConnell", just as though we hadn't kicked his geriatric ass out of his old job.
If they were scared of Republicans they wouldn't be helping them gain ever increasingly unchecked power.