Biden claims his administration has done “remarkably well on Covid,” even on testing.
He acknowledges the administration could have moved to increase access to testing a month earlier, but that he doesn't view it as a “mark of incompetence” given “everything else going on.”
“There is no way to get out of Afghanistan after 20 years easily. Not possible, no matter when you did it and I make no apologies for what I did,” Biden says.
Asked about whether he's satisfied with the competence in government in his first year as president, Biden responds that the war in Afghanistan was really expensive.
I'm just going to chalk that answer up as a “no.”
Biden defends the speech he gave in Atlanta last week on voting rights where he compared Republicans to segregationists: “Anybody who listened to the speech, I did not say that they were going to be a George Wallace or a Bull Connor.”
He claimed he was just suggesting that historically those who have not supported voting rights protections were voting with those who agreed with Wallace and Connor.
“Mitch [McConnell] did a real good job of making it sound like I was attacking [Republicans,]” he said.
Biden says Kamala Harris will be his running mate if he runs again in 2024 and she is doing a “good job” in her role as a leader on voting rights.
When asked about Russia, it becomes clear that Biden never shook his Senate habit of long-winded, meandering, wide-ranging oratory, throwing in everything he knows or remembers and looping back to various aspects of the issue. This isn't always a problem, but when it comes to potential conflicts and foreign policy, the president needs to be clear, direct, crisp, and unmistakable. Those are not the traits of Biden's comments about Russia and Ukraine today.
Reporter asks if Biden administration has determined whether Putin plans to move into Ukraine as he said earlier in the press conference.
“The only thing I'm confident in is that decision is totally, solely, completely a Putin decision,” he says, adding, “I suspect it matters what side of the bed he gets up on in the morning as to what he's going to do.”
Biden dodges question on why the White House hasn't changed the definition of “fully vaccinated” against Covid-19 to include a third booster shot and if the reason is that the number of fully-vaccinated Americans would suddenly look a lot less impressive.
He claims it is not and avoids the question over the definition. Pressed again he says: “The answer is yes, get the booster shot it's all part of the same thing. You're better protected.”
Joe Biden once again tells the story that five Republican senators actually agree with him on big issues, but they dare not vote for the president's agenda, because they fear they would lose their seats in a primary challenge. Thankfully, the reporter asked Biden to name which senators, and Biden insisted his conversations with those senators are confidential.
But not so confidential that he can't tell a story that makes them look cowardly and the rest of the party as unreasonable!
Biden claims Mitch McConnell “has one straightforward objective: make sure that there's nothing I do that makes me look good, in his mind, with the public at-large.”