During a CNN town hall event in Ohio, President Biden pressed his case to pass his agenda. Host Don Lemon and the left were obsessed with the filibuster.
Summary
In a town hall style event in Cincinnati hosted by CNN, President Joe Biden made repeated pleas to all Americans to get vaccinated for COVID-19.
- The COVID-19 pandemic was not the only topic: Biden said Republicans who (correctly) allege Democrat elected officials are trying to defund police departments are lying.
- A question from a restauranteur about employee wages prompted the President to suggest he should pay his employees $15/hour while also stating the federal supplemental unemployment benefits are ending, which should help him find more employees.
- Biden also touched on immigration, saying he is working on a solution for “dreamers” (those residing in the United States illegally after being brought here as children) while also urging those seeking refuge from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala not to come to the United States illegally.
- Before the event, it attracted criticism from Catholics and pro-life advocacy groups, arguing Mount St. Joseph University, a Catholic school, should not be hosting pro-choice Biden (who is also Catholic).
- The New York Times and Huffington Post obsessed over the filibuster and mildly criticized the President for his defense (which was less than robust) of the legislative tool.
- CNN, the television host for the event, praised Biden for the optimistic, yet frank nature of his answers, and pointed to his insistence on wanting to work in a bipartisan manner.
- Deadline highlighted Biden’s insistence to the international community that “America is back.”
- The New York Post dinged President Biden for the venue being not even half-full while National Review’s Jack Butler gutted the very idea of town hall style political events in the first place, arguing the format itself is unserious.
- RedState analyzed some of the questioners and their queries, then gave Biden’s performance a less than stellar grade despite the apparent shallowness of the questions.
- Daily Caller noted host Don Lemon’s obsession with questions over the filibuster, butting in on a question from the audience about Biden’s commitment to voting rights if he wasn’t willing to end the Senate filibuster.
Author’s Take
President Biden had a few doozies in his answers. He flip-flopped on the impact federal supplemental unemployment benefits had on the labor market within minutes. He literally lied about Democrats wanting to defund the police. Some outlets did provide fact checks on his statements, including the Boston Globe and the Associated Press.
With a Democrat in the White House, it is now the right’s turn to hyperventilate over some rhetorical flourish and political hyperbole and call it lying or gaslighting. Yes, Biden was too unequivocal in his statement that getting vaccinated will prevent you from getting infected with COVID-19. Biden is a politician, a motormouth one at that, and prone to outlandish or just-barely-over-the-line statements. Same as Trump.
The difficulty now lies in how to treat it given the Biden White House’ efforts to strongarm Big Tech into acting as their Ministry of Truth. In normal times, Biden’s tendency to embellish would not be that big of a deal. But with state-sponsored fact checkers scouring your Facebook feed and text messages, we’re running into the danger of only one side’s speech being policed—especially when neither side’s speech should be coerced by the government.
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© Dallas Gerber, 2021
