White House Report Card: Biden-Blinken ‘dumbing down’ US diplomacy

This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden facing a government shutdown, a lingering auto workers strike and the opening of impeachment proceedings in the House.

Our graders said it was another winless week for the president.

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Democratic pollster John Zogby, grading it a “C,” said that Biden might look better than the Republicans in the budget fight.

And conservative analyst Jed Babbin said that the week was the latest in efforts by Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to dumb down foreign policy.

Jed Babbin
Grade: D-

It was another one of those weeks. President Joe Biden repeated some old and false stories, Secretary of State Antony Blinken played the guitar and nobody cared much about anything the Biden crew did.

Biden repeated the claim that he knows Chinese President Xi Jinping better than any other leader did because he’d flown 17,000 miles with him. It’s totally false, but our senile guy believes it.

Biden also went to a United Auto Worker’s picket line in Michigan. He was asked whether the UAW deserved a 40% raise and he said they did. Then he said he hadn’t heard the question before answering. Are the autoworkers dumb enough to believe that he’s on their side given the fact that #Bidenflation has reduced their take-home pay for two years running?

And Blinken opened some sort of global music diplomacy initiative at the State Department by singing “Hootchie Cootchie Man” and playing the guitar. As Biden’s diplomacy goes, this is as successful as it gets. Meanwhile, the Biden crew is blocking Saudi peace terms with Israel, China and Russia are getting closer together and Iran used its United Nations appearance last week to say the U.S. was defeated. The dumbing down of U.S. diplomacy continues.

John Zogby
Grade: C

It was not just another walk in the park this week for President Joe Biden.

The House began proceedings to determine if the president should be investigated for impeachment. There is yet no tangible evidence of presidential wrongdoing but Biden’s son, Hunter, is looking pretty awful. Generally presidents aren’t removed for the sins of their family, but the turf has changed and vengeance rules over law and facts. At the end of this GOP rainbow there is probably no House impeachment and certainly no Senate conviction. But not to worry, barely anyone outside of Fox News is paying attention.

By the way, have you heard the joke about the fringe House members who are holding Speaker Kevin McCarthy hostage, making excessive demands for budget cuts and threatening a vote on his ouster if he compromises with Democrats. The punchline: the government shuts down, hundreds of government employees get to miss paychecks, and hundreds of agencies either shut down or go on austerity. This is an historically bad scenario for the GOP and it makes the president look better.

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And his polls are still stuck, but he is not them.

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 Twitter @jedbabbin

John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies