America's Talking - Episode 36: Biden takes on Ukraine, inflation in State of the Union address

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Join The Center Square's Dan McCaleb and Casey Harper as they discuss: Satisfaction with Biden's performance was low ahead of state of the union address. Biden takes on Ukraine, inflation in State of the Union address. Biden divides Democrats with calls to 'fund police' and Critics pan Biden's plan to fight inflation. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The monthly jobs report came out today for the last month, obviously. Is that how that works? Yeah, you know, that's why you listen in, because you learn key facts. Like the monthly jobs report covers the previous months economically. Oh, I didn't. You don't get that anywhere else. You don't get that anywhere else. Welcome to America and Focus.

I'm Cole McNeely, general manager of America's Talking Network. America and Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can listen to America and Focus and all of our podcast at America's Talking.com. That's Americastalking.com. Now here's your host, Dan McAelib. Thank you, Cole, and welcome to American Focus, the podcast where we talk about the news from our nation's capital and the issues from there that matter to you. I'm Dan McAlebe, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service.

American Focus is brought to you by America's Talking Network, a new podcast hub where you can find news, civil conversations, and all of the Center Square's great podcasts. Go to America's.com to check out all of our. available podcast once again. That's America's Talking.com. Joining me today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief of the Center Square. Casey, I've been on vacation

this week celebrating my wife's 50th birthday. I didn't miss any news, did I? Yeah, nothing happened at all. Although I am glad to hear that you got such a younger woman. That's great. Congratulations.

Just a few news items this week, though. Of course, I joke, President Biden did give his state of the union address this week. Lots to unpack from that speech. But before we get into that, new job numbers released today. Casey, we're recording this on Friday morning, March 4th. Tell us what's the latest in the new jobs data? Sure.

So the monthly jobs report came out today for the last month, obviously. And it showed big gains. Is that how that works? Yeah, you know, so it's one, and that's why you listen in to our podcasting, because you learn key facts like the monthly jobs report covers the previous months economically. I don't know. You don't get that anywhere else. You don't get that anywhere else. So we actually, in February, added 678,000 jobs.

And the unemployment rate was at 3.8%. These figures are from the department, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, you know, the estimates were about 440,000 new jobs and a 3.9% unemployment rate. So, you know, I don't know math major, but that's about 200, almost 250,000 more jobs than were expected, which is obviously good, but it's even better than, you know, previous months have been kind of the opposite trend, which is we have this expectation. And some months, Biden, or the Biden's economy, some of something. referring to it have come in at half those numbers. If you look at, you know, so the, you know, the jobs report to last year in particular, we're just consistently coming in underperforming. And so that's been a big thorn in the Biden administration side. But it looks like we have a good report

this month. You can't go too much off of one report because it could change. It can, you know, there can be fluctuations. But this is definitely a sign the economy's trending in the right direction and, you know, heading into these November elections, this is the issue. You know, Democrats, pretty much any Democrat you talk to expects Republicans to really trounce Democrats in November. Big part of that is because of the economy. And there's other issues, and we can talk about this later. But rising inflation, job market problems, Republicans are generally trusted more in the

economy. Polling has shown that for years. And so when the economy is doing poorly, voters tend to turn to Republicans. Right. Well, so the jobs numbers are good for February, but as you said, you can't rely on one monthly jobs report to signal, you know, what's ahead for the economy. But let's keep our fingers crossed that things go well there. I know now that I mentioned, both my wife and I in our 50s, we're paying particularly closer attention to the stock market in our 401ks and whatnot. Stock market, not so well.

Yeah, I mean, there's been, the fluctuations in the stock market in the last couple of years have been pretty wild. I can't imagine having, you know, being near retirement after watching what happened in 2020, it would be nerve wracking, I'm sure it was for a lot of our listeners. It does seem like compared to the pit of the pandemic, we're doing a lot better, but there is a lot of unpredictability. There's not just like the steady, confident growth. you never know with the new variants when a new lockdown could come or, you know, I mean, if they announced a new variant of COVID today, I mean, what's going to happen to your stock? You know, what's going to happen to your holdings? Your portfolio is going to tank probably.

There might be another round of shutdowns, which would just be devastating. Although I think there's a lot less political will for shutdowns because people didn't like them the first time. And they didn't feel like they really worked. And a lot of the data shows that they didn't really make a difference. And so I'm not sure that we would have such widespread shutdowns again, but any news of a new variant is going to really hurt the economy. It's going to hurt the stock market. And that could happen any day. And so I think it will happen.

I think there will be another variant. And the question is just how severe will it be and how do we respond? You know, I think Americans are done with shutdowns. We're not going to talk a lot about COVID today. but my wife and I traveled to Las Vegas this weekend. It was almost like, you know, obviously in airplanes, you still have to wear, in airports, you still have to wear masks. But, you know, pretty much my entire visit out west,

it was almost as if the pandemic didn't exist. Very few masks. No whatsoever discussion about it. So let's hope that's behind us, but let's move on to, Biden's state of the union address. First, you watched it. Which overall, before we get into specific topics of conversation, it was his first state of the union,

the president's first state of the union, overall impressions. Sure, you know, it was an important one. His first is, of course, important, but given the fighting in Ukraine and made it even more important, the struggle is the economy, heightened the importance, and then an election year. So there's a lot of rioting on this speech as well as, you know, Biden's struggling approval

number, which we'll talk about in a few moments, I think. But, you know, coming into that speech, he had a lot of expectations. A lot of his own party was looking to him to try to rebound some of the losses that they'd take in politically, you know, in the polls. And so I think my just overall top line takeaway is, you know, it was okay. It wasn't a flop. There wasn't any big mistakes or terror. You know, he didn't really have a ton of missed opportunities.

But I don't think that he really rose to the moment either to the degree that he could have. You know, I was watching a different, I like to watch different cable channels responses to the state of the union because that will tell you a lot, depending on how they lean. And both MSNBC and Fox News were really tough on the speech. you know, the more liberal acres on MSNBC felt like he did it. Seize the moment on Ukraine well enough. And I do understand some of that

criticism. They want they wanted him to, and a lot of people wanted him to paint this picture of almost re-casting the Cold War, the way that Ronald Reagan did so successfully, this big epic fight between good versus evil that the United States had a moment in history

to rise to to, to stop the spread of evil and all America should unite in this like glorious moment of American exceptionalism to stop the communists basically. And he didn't really do that. There was definitely some talk about Ukraine, about the struggles of Ukraine. But it didn't, it didn't feel inspirational. It didn't feel like this is, you know, a moment that for us to really prove ourselves. It just felt like, hey, Ukraine is a, this is a terrible situation. We stand within. And there was definitely,

Biden's language on Russia has been so interesting because he seems to be trying to say that everything he's been doing has been working. You know, he keeps trying to take credit for stopping and slowing down Russia, how the sanctions have done so much. And he's like, we, you know, we've stopped. And Ukraine has risen up.

And it feels often, it felt often the speech that he was trying to say, as if like the tide of battle has turned in favor of us. I think that's just like hard. It's a hard sell when you're watching on TV, Russia, just kind of the caravan, this huge caravan moving into Ukraine, when you're seeing like nuclear sites fall under Russian control, when you're seeing like, you know, Ukrainians huddled in subway tunnels,

to kind of just prematurely declare victory, maybe not literally, but in your tone speak as if the tide of the battle is turned. I think it didn't really come across well, especially given what we're seeing on TV and also given that there's a really good chance that Ukraine is still going to just fall within the coming weeks totally into Russian control. So that, you know, when we look at Ukraine, that is kind of how it's messing with. There's other things he hit on. He hit on the border.

He hit on defunding police. You know, he hit on a lot, spent a lot of time on the economy and on inflation. And we can dig more into those. But on the Ukraine issue, in particular, the general sense that I saw here in the Beltway is that it didn't really rise to meet what many were hoping. Well, our thoughts and prayers certainly go out to the people of Ukraine. We wish them the best. Who knows what's going to happen. We're now more than a week into the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Periods, it looks like it slowed. sometimes, you know, it looks like Russia's making progress. So who knows what's going to come over the next weeks, but certainly we, our thoughts and prayers are out for the Ukrainian people. But I think as we talked about last week on America in focus, the vast majority of American people do not want the United States to get involved militarily over there, do what we can from sanctions and whatnot. but we should not send our own American men, young men and women over there to fight.

So let's talk about the economy and inflation in particular from Biden's state of the union address. What did the president have to say about inflation and what was the reaction to that? Sure. I mean, inflation has been one of the defining issues of the Biden presidency so far. And I think it's one of the last things that Biden wanted to be. be defined by, let alone even talking about in his first year at office when he's trying to really, you know, Biden has governed as a old school tax and spin liberal who just wants to pass the big government programs, not do any of the, as much of the super radical things that we see from some lawmakers in Congress, but pass a big federal government program. But when you, when that's your

agenda, the last thing you want is high inflation because it really pulls the rug out from under you, but that's exactly what he has. And so, you know, the consumer price index, which is a key marker of inflation, is shown that, you know, the fastest rising inflation in 40 years. There's other indicators of, you know, producer prices being at historic high, like the highest numbers on record. Energy costs have risen by about 30 percent. Food prices are, you know, extremely high.

You know, the average price of gas has risen a full dollar. in the last 12 months. And so obviously that's not a trend that anyone wants to continue. You mentioned just briefly on this gas thing, something that shocked me driving home from the airport this week, we needed to fill up. And for the first time, in a long time, gas when we filled up, was more than $4 a gallon.

In fact, it was $4.15 a gallon. So it's gone up in just the past week. Yeah, and that's Americans, you know, our listeners are feeling that all around the country. And of course, Republicans are really harping on this. I mean, one of the big memes right now is these are these stickers with Joe Biden, you know, it's like a peel away sticker that you can put somewhere, and it's Joe Biden pointing to something. And you put it next to on the gas pump to your total price, right? And it says, I did that.

All right. And people are going around putting them on gas pumps so that when your gas total rings up, you see these new found high prices, which you refer to you, and then you see this picture of Biden. So this is, you know, I think you're talking about having a moment where he's got to address something for his party and for the country. Inflation was top of the list. And Biden definitely took a swing at it.

He spent a lot of time on inflation. You know, some of his quotes. He said, one way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poor. I have a better way to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages. And so this is kind of part of one of the big. White House arguments, which is that, yes, inflation's rising, but wages are rising too. So it's okay. And it's true that wages are rising, but inflation is rising, you know,

more significantly. And so it's really outpacing of these bloods for wage rates. And didn't he, he, he sort of blamed the supply chain issues for rising inflation and didn't accept the fact that soaring federal spending had anything to do with it. Right. And that's, that's been another. criticism against the Biden administration you know of course there have been supply chain disruptions there is a certain degree to which the inflation is because of supply chain issues but the increase in goods and services it's across all goods and service everything is getting more just about everything is getting more expensive there are a couple exceptions

and there are a few items that are getting more expensive than others so like energy is is getting much more expensive but that isn't to say that other things are there other things are still getting more expensive, maybe not to the same degree as energy. So it's not as if, you know, gas prices are an anomaly. This is economy-wide. Anyone who goes to the grocery store can tell you this. You know, you're not fooling Americans. Anyone who goes to the grocery store and starts shopping is seeing the difference in their grocery bill every month. And so, you know, I talked to several economists this week about Biden's speech. And in particular, his put,

to buy American. So if you operate under kind of the White House idea or messaging that inflation is mostly just a supply chain issue, Biden says, okay, well, let's just buy American, let's make things here, that'll lower cost, it'll prevent the supply chain disruptions, and that'll find inflation. You know, buy Americans, very popular. Trump got a lot of popularity on it. But all the experts I talked to said it didn't really pass the smell test. One, you know, there's a reason that people make things overseas. And the main reason is it's cheaper to make things overseas. You know, you can have some patriotism and want to create American jobs and that's all well good. But if you make something in America, it's almost always going to be more expensive because we pay people much more.

You know, we have much higher wages. We have more insurance and all kinds of things that you have to have. Real estate's much more expensive if you're going to build any kind of factory. So, you know, the consensus from the experts I talk to you is one, buying, you know, making anything in America, is not the way to lower prices. It might be good for the economy or some things, but it's going to make things more expensive because, you know, the traditional, like making things in China is just so much, or other countries that, you know, produce a lot of goods is so much cheaper.

So he really did push the Buy American messaging. He did not, as you said, address the federal debt spending, which is just skyrocketed, you know, since he took office and was already very high before he took office. Right. Well, let's move on to another somewhat contentious issue, particularly within the Democratic Party, and that has to do with law enforcement and either funding or defunding the police. Of course, crime, particularly violent crime, has been on the rise in major cities and elsewhere

across America. What was the president's message on police? Yeah, this is a really interesting issue. You know, of course, there were, you know, Black Lives Matter riots throughout 2020, preceding President Biden's entrance into the White House, he came into a pretty tense situation. A lot of Democrat, Democratic lawmakers and activists have been calling to defund the police pretty explicitly. You have seen Democrats move away from that messaging, I think in part because it polls so poorly. You know, there's a few reasons for that. One, Americans just, you look at the

polling, they do not support defunding the police. Even black, you know, black Americans do not support defunding the police, interestingly, despite what some activists would say. And so, part of that I understand is because defund police is not exactly the goal of all the activists. It's more like reallocate some funding. But it's really hard to message that. So, however, Biden has been consistently against those activists in his party, really even last year.

But in the state of the union, he made clear and very much emphasis. size they need to fund police. I believe he said it three times. He said, we should all agree. The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities. And he said, fund the police, fund the police multiple times. And he got a standing ovation from most lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But it wasn't long before some of his own party were pretty upset about it. You know, kind of notorious at this point is Representative Cory Bush out of Missouri. And I'll just read her response.

She said, with all due respect, Mr. President, you didn't mention saving black lives once in this speech. All our country has done is given more funding to police. The result, 2021 set a record for fatal police shootings. Defund the police, invest in our communities. All right. So there's probably a few things happening here. One, you know, I've referenced earlier that Biden is an old school Democrat.

And I think that supporting the police is very much in line with that. And he's not really on board with some of the more aggressive, progressive, political stances. So he's going to say fund the police, but it's causing rifts with his own party. We'll see how this plays out. But you have seen a lot of the Democrats who were very vocal on defund the police of 2020. Get pretty quiet about it. Maybe they haven't changed their stance, but they don't want to be talking about it anymore because they've seen the writing on the wall. It's not going to help anyone in November. Yeah. And particularly, you mentioned the polling on the defund the police movement. Not good. Americans do not overwhelmingly do not support it,

particularly when you see what's going on in major cities. I'm just a few miles away from the city of Chicago and what's been going on there. It's been a trend in Chicago for years, but you see that going on in other major cities. It's just not a popular point of view. So the Democrats, the progressives, who keep calling for it. You know, maybe it pulls well back home, but it certainly does not have the national support. People just don't buy it. They want to be safe.

They want to feel safe in their homes and their neighborhoods. We want to feel safe when they go out to dinner or when they go out shopping or whatever. So a little bit of contention within the president's own party. so we'll see how that plays out. Now ahead of the State of the Union address this week, Casey, there was some new polling data about President Biden's job approval. What can you tell us about that?

Yeah, this is really interesting. The day of the State of Union, Gallup released new polling. There's nearly the lowest rates that Americans have for Biden since he took office. So Gallup found that just 21% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going. just 21% in an election year. 78% are dissatisfied. Those are high numbers. Of course, you can't just attribute everything to the president, but politically it kind of doesn't matter because when the numbers are this high for dissatisfaction, whoever is in charge, whoever happens to be in charge of that time is going to take a wall up in November.

We keep referencing November. I think we will more this year because it's an election year and all these stories are kind of wrapped into an election year because that's a year because that's a lot of. how lawmakers are thinking, how they're reacting. But, you know, regardless of which party was in control, was 78% dissatisfaction, you know, that is going to just going to really hit him in November. And especially with the fight in Ukraine, we saw if you look at the charts for Biden's approval rating, it has been a steady decline since he took office. But actually, the Afghanistan issue was a big, really a big moment for a lot of voters and

has really hurt. I still don't think Biden has recovered from Afghanistan. The withdrawal for Afghanistan that, you know, left 13 U.S. service members killed and a lot of Americans stranded and, you know, it was pretty chaotic. We left a lot of equipment behind and a lot of lawmakers and the media and people in the media were really critical of that withdrawal. And so that hurt Biden a lot. And as soon as maybe people could begin to forget something like that, this whole Ukraine situation has really exploded. And so it's like it's back to back. It's back to foreign policy problems that are on a very large scale where it seems that maybe the U.S. made some mistakes.

And so those things on top of inflation, I would say, are three of the top things that are really driving Biden's approval. They did do some specific things. They found that 61 disapproved of Biden's work on crime. So that's referencing the violent crimes be free. 62% disapproved on the economy. So that's the inflation referred to. 63% disapproved on immigration.

Illegal immigration has absolutely soared since Biden took office. And Trump was famously hawkish on immigration. And Biden has been much softer. He made it very, very difficult for ICE to deport anyone. You pretty much, I mean, this is kind of a broad stroke, but you pretty much have to commit a pretty serious crime to get deported. You can't just get, you're not really going to get deported just for being here legally under the Biden's rules for ICE.

And then 70% disapproved, according to the poll on it. inflation. So that's, you know, that shows that a lot of voters do blame Biden for inflation, which is going to be a big problem, a big problem for him. Right. Yeah. And as you mentioned during this very important midterm election year, a lot working against the president and the president's party. Democrats have a very slim majority in the U.S. House. All U.S. House seats are up for grabs in November. It's a 50-50 split. If you take the independents who caucus with the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, so about a third of U.S. Senate seats are up in November. So control of Congress is at stake, and it's not really at this point, long way to go to November. It's only early March,

but a lot is working against the Democratic Party. And they're control of Congress. So we'll see what happens. But Casey, that is all the time we have this week. And a reminder to those of you listening, you can find all of the CenterSquares podcast at America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. No cost at all for you. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulb. We'll talk to you next week.