President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he would do “nothing” differently in the future, following Tuesday’s midterm election results, in which Democrats held off a “red wave” but voters registered their frustration with the status quo.
He had the following exchange with Zeke Miller of the Associated Press:
Miller: As you mentioned, you mentioned that Americans are frustrated. In fact, 75% of voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction, despite the results of last night. What, in the next two years, do you intend to do differently to change people’s opinion of the direction of the country, particularly as you contemplate a run for president in 2024.
Biden: Nothing. Because they’re just finding out what we’re doing. The more they know about what we’re doing, the more support there is. Do you know anybody who wants us to get rid of the change we made on prescription drug prices and raise prices again? Do you know anyone who wants us to walk away from building roads and bridges and the Internet and so on? I do not know — I think that the problem is, the major piece of legislation that we passed, some of it bipartisan, takes time to be recognized. For example, you’ve got over a trillion dollars worth of infrastructure money. Not that many spades have been put in the ground. It’s taking time — for example, I was on the phone congratulating a Californian recently, and then someone up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the congressman who got elected, he said, “Can you help us make sure that we are able to have high-speed rail service from Scranton to New York City?” I said, “Yeah, we can. We can.” First of all, it’ll make it a lot easier, take a lot of vehicles off the road, and we have more money in the pot now, already out there, that we voted for, than the entire money we spent on Amtrak to begin with. And it’s the same way — for example, I talked about during the campaign, that we’re going to limit the cost of insulin for seniors to $35 a month instead of $400 a month. Well, it doesn’t take effect until next year. So we there’s a lot of things that are just starting to kick in. And the same way with what we’ve done in terms of the environmental stuff. It takes time to get it moving. So I’m not going to change — matter of fact, you know, there are some things i want to change and add to. For example, we had passed the most bipartisan, we passed the most extensive gun legislation, you know, rational gun policy in 30 years, but we din’t ban assault weapons. I’m going to ban assault weapons. I’m going to try like the devil. So I’m not going to change the direction. I said I ran for three reasons. I’m going to continue to stay where I am now. I fully understand the legitimate concern that what I’m saying is wrong, okay? One is, that I said we were going to restore the soul of the country, begin to treat each other with decency, honor and integrity. And it’s starting to happen. People are — the conversations are becoming more normal, becoming more — how can I say it? — decent. The second thing I said was I want to build the country from the from the middle out, the bottom up, and that way everybody does fine. I’m tired of trickle-down. Not a whole lot trickles down when you trickle down to hard-working folks. The third thing I know is still very hard, I’m going to do everything in my power to see to it that we unite the country. It is hard to sustain yourself as a leading democracy in the word if you can’t generate some unity. So I”m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.
Biden spoke as votes were still being counted in key Senate races that could determine the ultimate control of the upper chamber. He also spoke hopefully about the possibility of compromise with the likely new Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.