First Lady Jill Biden defended President Biden’s stalled agenda on Saturday, blaming Republicans and a series of crises from keeping the president from carrying out his plans.
“[The President] had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment,” Biden told a crowd at a private Democratic National Committee fundraiser, according to CNN.
“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” she said. “Who would have ever thought about what happened [with the Supreme Court overturning] Roe v. Wade? Well, maybe we saw it coming, but still we didn’t believe it. The gun violence in this country is absolutely appalling. We didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming.”
Biden went on to blame Republicans for her husband’s difficulty passing his agenda.
“I know there are so many nay-sayers who say we’ll get slammed in the midterms. Okay. The Republicans are working hard, they stick together, for good or evil. So, we just have to work harder,” she said according to the outlet.
However, it is Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia who has kept Democrats in Congress from using budget reconciliation to pass President Biden’s agenda with just a simple majority.
Manchin killed President Biden’s Build Back Better bill in December and, just last week, said he would not support any climate or tax provisions in Democrats’ new economic bill.
Amid record-setting inflation, President Biden’s job approval has taken a nosedive and currently stands at an abysmal 33 percent, according to a recent New York Times and Siena College poll. The survey found just 13 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction.
Meanwhile, Jill Biden said Saturday she also feels she has been pulled away by problems of the moment.
“I was saying to myself, ‘Okay, I was second lady. I worked on community colleges. I worked on military families. I’ve worked on cancer.’ They were supposed to be my areas of focus. But then when we got [in the White House,] I had to be, with all that was happening, the first lady of the moment.”
She also spoke out against the Supreme Court striking down Roe, suggesting that protesting and being angry is not enough, despite her husband’s assertion last week that protesting is “critically important,” CNN reported.
The First Lady said, “So many young girls, my own grandchildren included, went up to the Supreme Court and marched. I say, ‘Okay, good for you. But what are you going to do next? You feel good about yourself because you voiced your opinion but what are you going to do next? What is your plan?'”