The New York Times kept high throughout the day the World Bank’s projection of “stuttered growth amid inflation” and also the defense, by Joe Biden’s Secretary of the Treasury, of “pandemic spending while inflation persists”.
Janet Yellen had admitted days earlier to CNN her “mistake” when she said last year that inflation in the US was temporary and was due to other problems, not the stimulus she defended so much, for the economy to react post-pandemic.
It “has put the Biden administration on the defensive”, the paper says, reflecting the concern surrounding the US president since the “dark milestone”, as Bloomberg and Washington Post put it in last week’s polls:
“His popularity has plummeted to the bottom: of the 13 poll-era presidents, none were worse off at this point in their first term, 500 days in the presidency, than Biden’s 40.5% approval rating.”
Reports by NBC, CNN and Politico have described how he now “wants to get out more”, frustrated at “being in a worse position than Trump”. Hence signing articles in the Wall Street Journal and NYT and posing with the K-pop group BTS for social media in the Oval Office (above).
Also the interview for Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show, scheduled for this Wednesday (8) on ABC. As with everything else, the target is the midterm election, five months from now, which has been threatening to wipe out the governing majorities in Congress.
Your party follows suit. “Democrats see televised hearings as a way to highlight the January 6 revelations,” the NYT reported, about the start of broadcasts by the ruling majority commission, on Thursday (9).
Fox News, the largest news channel, has already warned that it will not pass.
FROM THE CUPOLA TO THE CARAVAN
The Summit of the Americas is losing presidents, now the Uruguayan, with Covid, but what matters is the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who confirmed that he will not, “in a coup for Biden”, in the NYT’s highlight.
It shot down the chance of “any substantial deal on immigration, which the White House emphasized as a key topic for the meeting.”
Worse, Mexicans like La Jornada cover and Fox News already explores a new caravan of immigrants that left the Guatemalan-Mexico border towards the US, numbering about ten thousand and growing.
