Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, host of FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” said he thinks President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers can be blamed on economic headwinds caused by his administration’s policies during his Friday broadcast.
Carlson argued the administration’s handling of Afghanistan and other shortcomings did not play as significant of a role that some in the media have claimed.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Now, it’s hard to have a lot of faith in political polling, obviously, especially after the last couple of presidential elections. The polls weren’t just wrong in those elections, they were insane. They told us things like, oh no, Hillary could take Texas and Joe Biden’s a lock to win Florida.
In the end, those predictions had no relationship to observable reality, but that doesn’t mean that all polling is worthless. Actually, as a relative measure over time, polls can provide a lot of historical context.
So, Joe Biden’s polls are in the toilet right now. Everyone knows that and the question is why. You’ll hear a lot of people say, well, it was Afghanistan — the true debacle that Biden oversaw in Afghanistan. The question is that really it, however? Is a foreign policy disaster enough to knock a President off his game in his first year in office?
Well here are some comparisons. Gerald Ford’s approval ratings after the Fall of Saigon, those would be worth looking at. The Fall of Saigon was the most humiliating moment in this country’s history up until that time.
The entire world watched as Americans ran from a peasant army, civilians dangled from helicopters, taking off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. It was a catastrophe, one that became an enduring symbol of the incompetence of our foreign policy establishment.
The U.S. had spent more than a decade in Vietnam, lost close to 60,000 men, and after all of that, we ran away. And yet, in the days after the Fall of Saigon, Gerald Ford’s poll numbers as measured by Gallup actually went up. His approval rating increased from 39 to 40%. Then just a month later, by the end of May, 1975, Ford’s approval rating surged to 51%.
So Gerald Ford — President Ford oversaw an international embarrassment, but Americans gave him a pass. They weren’t done with him, just yet.
Something very similar happened during the John F. Kennedy administration. Kennedy was in charge during the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961, which he single-handedly turned into a disaster. That disaster made Fidel Castro a national hero in Cuba and drove Cuba even closer to the Soviet Union. All of this happened just before the Cuban missile crisis.
So that was not a good thing for anybody and yet despite that, JFK’s approval ratings did not drop. In fact, they went up from 78% to 83% in the days after the disaster.
So the Bay of Pigs happened in the first year of the Kennedy administration. The Fall of Saigon happened in the first year of the Ford administration, so it’s hard not to conclude that when Presidents are just starting out, Americans give them a pass even on the big things, especially in foreign policy.
So with that in mind, it is worth taking a look at how Joe Biden’s approval numbers have changed during his first year in office, and of course it’s an unequivocal disaster.
According to a new Quinnipiac poll, only 36% of Americans approve of the job Joe Biden is doing in office. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Joe Biden doing only marginally better at about 41%. Gallup has Biden at 42%, down 15 points from just a couple of months ago.
You should know that Kamala Harris’s approval number is 28%, which is right around Jeffrey Dahmer level.
So two-thirds of Americans do not want Joe Biden to run for President again and that includes most Democrats. Just 10 months into Biden’s presidency, Americans want him gone.
So as a historical matter that’s unheard of. How bad is it? It’s gotten so bad that college students typically not a right-wing demographic are mocking Biden at football games.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: [Bleep] Biden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So Biden is deeply unpopular. The question is why. How did we get here? That matters and that’s going to be our focus over the next hour on this show.
What we’re witnessing under the Biden administration is something Americans will absolutely not forgive, the decline in our standard of living. Biden hasn’t simply embarrassed the United States internationally, though he’s certainly done that, Americans can overlook that as they did under Ford and JFK and hope for something better next time.
Biden has made living in this country much more difficult for millions of people. He has made it a lot harder for Americans to afford basic amenities, things like building supplies and gasoline. And then he showed almost no interest in fixing this. In fact, it’s clear as it is being done on purpose because global warming.
One local news station in Florida has talked to restaurant owners about the effect of rising food prices, for example. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): From chicken wings …
JOHN HORNE, FRLA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: It’s $140.00 a case versus what was $40.00.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): … to plastic gloves.
JOHN HORNE: They’ve gone from $20.00 a case to $140.00-plus, and again, sometimes it’s hard to get those.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): Nearly everything costs more. John Horne on FRLA’s Executive Committee also owns Anna Maria Oyster Bars. Supply issues are keeping favorites like Alaskan king crab legs and clam strips off the menu.
JOHN HORNE: One of our most popular items, can’t get them from anyone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, major commodities in the wholesale food price index are way up since last year. Beef rose 57.7%, fat and oils nearly 50%, eggs almost 40%, and processed poultry, 30%.
To offset that menu, prices on average are up 4.7%.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: What is this exactly? We can’t get enough food? A lot of things are happening and one of them is inflation and inflation is not an act of God, it’s the result of government policy. The Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by printing too many U.S. dollars. Why are they printing them? To pay for more government spending, spending that under the Biden administration is now literally out of control.
There was a $10.1 trillion amount of spending obligations in fiscal year 2020, $10.1 trillion. 2019 which wasn’t ancient history was the other day, the total was $6.6 trillion, still a lot, but very different than $10.1 trillion.
Now the spending is of course on the way — more spending is on the way because we can spend any amount of money, we hold the world’s reserve currency. Biden’s so-called Build Back Better Bill is estimated to cost another $5 trillion.
So the people who are printing this money, the U.S. Congress, the Fed specifically know that they are making the problem worse, but they don’t care. In fact, they are mocking you for noticing that your standard of living has declined. The St. Louis Fed just released this statement, it’s hard to miss the contempt here. This is real, quote: “A Thanksgiving dinner serving poultry costs $1.42, a soybean based dinner serving with the same amount of calories cost 66 cents and provides almost twice as much protein,” end quote.
Of course being soy based also lowers your testosterone level, which of course is the entire point of this, but it is just interesting that the Fed, which is supposed to be focused on keeping inflation under control, that’s why we have a Fed is now telling you what to eat. How did this happen? How long until they tell you to eat bugs to stop climate change? Not far. Not far from that at all.
In the Biden administration, a host of bureaucratic agencies are suddenly in charge of your body, the minute details of your body, what you have for Thanksgiving dinner.
The White House believes that OSHA, for example, can tell you what to inject into your body. Get the injection or you’re fired. Now, you’ll remember that just a few months ago, the White House was saying the opposite of this, vaccine mandates are illegal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don’t think it should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power just like I don’t think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Can we mandate vaccines across the country? No, that’s not a role that the Federal government, I think, even has the power to make.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We cannot require someone to be vaccinated, that’s just not what we can do. It is a matter of privacy to know who is or who isn’t.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: No, definitely not. You don’t want to mandate and try and force anyone to take a vaccine. We’ve never done that we. Don’t want to be mandating from the federal government to the general population. It would be unenforceable and not appropriate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: These people are reckless and crazy and dishonest, and the rest of us put up with it. After all of that, after everything you just saw, of course, they mandated the injections. They knew that was illegal, just as we saw with the eviction ban, they did it anyway.
Then the airlines started cancelling flights. The healthcare workers disappeared because somehow politicians know more about corona than nurses. How does that work? They did it anyway. They ran out truck drivers to pick up goods from ports. First responders were fired, you couldn’t get an ambulance and Joe Biden stands up at a town hall and says they had it coming.
Yes, the little people are getting uppity. We’re going to hurt them and he definitely hurt them.
So this is brazen. Most people are very tired of it. It’s not a partisan question. Do you want to live in a functional country or don’t you?
The question is, how are we going to survive three more years of this? That’s a very good question.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor