WH Press Secretary Can’t Explain Away Biden’s Crappy Economy

CLAY: The Biden White House is so incompetent. I wanted to play this cut for you, and we’re going to talk some about the primary results here in a few minutes at the top of the next hour, but everybody in the Biden White House at this point, it feels like, is awful at actually speaking publicly. Peter Doocy, who is doing an incredible job of holding the Biden White House’s feet to the fire, asked Karine Jean-Pierre about the economy and then she gave a totally unintelligible answer.

Listen to this:

BUCK: Clay, I just say, she’s right insofar as we’re in a fundamentally different place when Biden took office — a fundamentally worse place, which everyone knows. Karine Jean-Pierre, I get it. If you watch, she’s reading. It’s almost like she’s giving a book report in high school.

CLAY: She has notes to look at, Buck, but she’s not even looking at the right notes to read! That was a totally unintelligible response to a pretty simple question.

BUCK: Here she is again trying to explain — and to be fair, explaining Biden’s crappy economy is not a job that anybody really wants right now.

CLAY: You or I don’t agree with almost anything Biden says. If you put us behind the podium and said, “It is your job to speak to the public,” we would be a billion percent better than she is at this job.

BUCK: But here she is… This one… I was thinking, what does this even supposedly mean.

DOOCY: Sixty-one percent are saying now, in the Wall Street Journal poll, they’re generally pessimistic about people having the opportunity to achieve the American dream. How is that going to look on a bumper sticker?

JEAN-PIERRE: What I’m saying is the economy has been in a better place than it has been historically, and so we feel at this administration — and other experts as well is that we feel — we’re in a good position to take on inflation. We’re in a good position to really start really working on lowering prices.”

BUCK: Clay, you’re in charge! You’re in a good position to start? You’ve been in charge for 18 months. I know she hasn’t been in charge, but the Biden administration has. And this point about how a better place for the economy historically? Compared to like 1929 or the ’30s or what is she talking about?

CLAY: (laughing) We’ve got 40-year high inflation. Your average person out there, in all 50 states, is paying more for gas than they ever have in the history of their lives. It’s about to go over… I think, probably tomorrow, Buck. We’re officially going to go over $5 a gallon for the average person all over the country. Now, hopefully, it’s still cheaper than the particular part of the country you’re in, but we’re almost to $5 here in Nashville when I drive by and look at the price of gas on the side of the road.

BUCK: I thought of this yesterday, Clay, right after the show because we briefly mentioned here that Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act for solar. For solar. Why not invoke —

CLAY: Not do it for oil and gas?

BUCK: Why not invoke the Defense Production Act…? First of all, people will yell at me, “Buck, that’s not what it’s for!” I know. But it shows you the mentality that their break-the-glass plan, instead of dealing with the real problem, “Oh, my gosh, we need to use all of our industrial might to make those windmills and solar panels!”

CLAY: Well, if the other choices are, to your point, 100% right, we’ll go bend the knee to Saudi Arabia and we’ll beg Venezuela, and we’re gonna get into a bad nuclear armament deal with Iran, all because those three countries can help to replace the oil and gas that Russia is not distributing around the world. Wouldn’t you rather the Defense Production Act be put in place in the United States to create as much oil and gas domestically as possible? To your point, it makes a ton of sense. If you’re going to do it for solar panels, how about doing it for actual gas? Now, he won’t because it violates the tenets of the Green New Deal.

BUCK: I would like more petroleum engineers and fewer tree equity consultants. Call me crazy.

CLAY: That would be a fantastic trade.