This week’s White House Report Card may be the worst yet for President Joe Biden and his administration, a rare double “F” from our conservative and Democratic graders.
Pollster John Zogby wasted no words blasting Biden’s “wet noodle” approach to the Middle East war. “This week has been marked by a total foreign policy failure by the Biden administration,” he wrote for our report card.
Conservative analyst Jed Babbin cited other blundering by the hard-to-find president, writing that he has the “brainpower of a potato.”
America’s youngest voters turn right https://t.co/AeVlhui2dk
— JohnZogbyStrategies (@zogbystrategies) September 28, 2024
Biden has been AWOL for weeks, even skipping his long naps on the Delaware beaches in his chaise lounge, where he spent a large chunk of his presidency before Democrats kicked him out of his reelection campaign.
Kamala Harris falsely accused CBP agents of whipping illegal immigrants and compared ICE to white supremacy, and now she’s strutting around praising them and pretending she has their back.
Disgusting politics. pic.twitter.com/ex7UVGEkln
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 27, 2024
He did find time to make his last address to the United Nations, which was mostly ignored, meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, though the war-time leader’s meeting with former President Donald Trump won more headlines, and sign a largely ceremonial gun control order.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris has been strutting on the campaign trail as if she were president, a scary thought to many. Her big move this week was to give a minutes-long photo op at the border, likely just to get some campaign advertising video. That was countered by a horrific new report that she and the president have overseen a border policy that let in 30,000 illegals linked to murders and rapes.
She did say something smart this week, though, as Babbin noted in his report. Harris said that it is time to move past the failed past four years of the Biden-Harris era.
John Zogby
Grade F
This week has been marked by a total foreign policy failure of the Biden administration.
The president is supposed to be the head of the “free world” and all the superpower status and authority that allegedly accompanies that title.
In many ways, good riddance that we seem to not live in that world anymore. There are plenty of regional superpowers flexing their muscles and influence to challenge the U.S. But for America to sit idly by and allow the destruction of sections of Lebanon is not simply weakness. It is inhumane.
President Joe Biden’s administration barely lashed with a wet noodle at the Israeli government that broke all kinds of international law in its asymmetric warfare in Gaza, enabled armed and fanatical illegal settlers to launch an ethnic-cleansing campaign in the West Bank, and now indiscriminately bomb southern Lebanon and Beirut.
Of course, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran are culprits but the U.S. has done nothing but standby while allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose only ideology is political survival, to launch a genocide on tens of thousands of innocent people. Where is Vice President Kamala Harris?
Jed Babbin
Grade: F
Campaign watchers were amused this week by Vice President Kamala Harris’s statement that American voters need to “move on” from the “failed policies” that “we have proven don’t work,” in an address on the economy on Wednesday.
We do need to move on from the Biden policies — especially “Bidenomics” — which has wrecked the economy. Harris has endorsed “Bidenomics” and said there’s more to do on it. That followed an equally correct statement by her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, that we “can’t afford more years of this” a few days earlier. Walz, for once, was correct.
Only the most brazenly false incumbent can run on a “reform” ticket, and that’s exactly what Harris is doing. Are American voters dumb enough not to hold her responsible for the policies that she and President Joe Biden have pursued since 2020?
The Biden crew’s rhetoric on former President Donald Trump appears to be advocating his assassination. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said this week, in response to a question about women’s rights and who would be the better protector, “How did we get here? Let’s extinguish him for good.” As the two assassination attempts on Trump have proved, this sort of rhetoric can inspire crazies to take another shot at Trump. Maybe that’s what the Democrats want.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was campaigning for Harris. He knows, or thinks he knows, that Trump will end aid to Ukraine if Trump is reelected in November. Both Biden and Harris met with Zelensky and promised undying support. All this comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s endorsement of Harris (which Putin’s spokesman now says was a joke).
Another joke (?) is Harris’s new motto, “forward together.” Which, in Chinese, is “gung ho,” which has been the motto of the Chinese Communist Party since the days of Mao.
And Old Joe is still pretending to be in charge. In New York, he told a crowd, “Welcome to Washington,” and in Washington, he forgot who he was supposed to introduce — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has the brainpower of a potato, and the Democrats still leave him in power. Will the October Surprise be his removal and installation of the vice president as commander-in-chief?
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John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book, Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should, was just released. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.