“They have the money to spend.” — President Joe Biden

Those of us who’ve been around a while remember when the press made an epic deal out of President George H.W. Bush’s apparent amazement at an ordinary grocery store checkout scanner. It turns out the story was a complete media fabrication, but it fed the narrative that Bush was hopelessly out of touch, and it helped cost him his reelection.

This week, Joe Biden actually did do something that shows he is perhaps the most clueless president in American history.

In a softball interview this week, CNN’s Erin Burnett let Biden carry on — uninterrupted — with his usual litany of lies.

• That he created 15 million jobs (there’ve been less than 6 million net new jobs under Biden – about equal to Trump’s over the same period).
• That Trump told people to inject bleach (a claim repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers).
• That a million people died from COVID on Trump’s watch (fewer than 470,000 had died when Biden took office; more than 720,000 have died since).
• That “we have got 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what their average federal tax is? Eight-point-three percent” (a completely made-up number that we wrote about here).
• That “when I started this administration, people were saying there’s going to be a collapse of the economy” (nobody but Biden was saying that).

But then Burnett, to her credit, asked about inflation.

“The cost of buying a home in the United States is double what it was, when you look at your monthly costs, from before the pandemic,” she says. “Real income, when you account for inflation, is actually down since you took office, economic growth last week far short of expectations. Consumer confidence, maybe no surprise, is near a two-year low.”

Biden’s response was a priceless example of incoherent braggadocio.

First, he completely ignores the fact that real wages are down, and instead points to a survey that, he says, shows “65% of the American people think they’re in good shape economically.”

Then he follows that up by saying “the polling data has been wrong all along.”

Then he’s entirely dismissive of anyone complaining. “The idea that we’re in a situation where things are so bad, the folks that — I mean, we have created more jobs. We have made — we’re in a situation where people have access to good-paying jobs.”

Then he follows that up with a whopper of a lie. “I mean, no president’s had the run we have had, in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was 9% when I came to office, 9%.”

Biden must think he’s Ronald Reagan or something. The month Reagan took office, inflation was 11.8%. By this point in his first term, it was down to 4.2% and falling.

The month Biden took office, inflation was 1.4%. Eighteen months later it topped 9%. Now it’s 3.5% and rising again.

Here’s when Biden commits his “supermarket scanner” moment.

BURNETT: What about — I mean, but there’s real pain. I mean, grocery prices are up 30%, more than 30% since the beginning of the pandemic, and people are spending more on food and groceries than they have at any time really in the past 30 years. I mean, that’s a real day-to-day pain that people feel.

BIDEN: No, no, it really is. And it’s real.

But the fact is that, if you take a look at what people have, they have the money to spend. It angers them and angers me that you have to spend more.

They have the money to spend?!?!?

Does Biden think that money just magically appears in people’s bank accounts to spend? That they aren’t being forced, thanks to Bidenflation, to make difficult tradeoffs between food and health care? Rack up credit card debt (which is at record highs, as are delinquencies)? Cancel vacation plans? Is he completely unaware of just how many people have had to take second or third jobs just to make ends meet?

They have the money to spend?!?!?

Our I&I/TIPP January poll found that a shockingly high 64% say they are living to paycheck to paycheck, including 41% of those making more than $75,000 a year. The poll found that one quarter say they have zero dollars put aside for emergencies and another 20% say they have less than $1,000.

They have the money to spend?!?!?

Biden is getting hammered on social media for this clueless-beyond-words statement, and rightly so.

But we won’t be satisfied until that line – “they have the money to spend” – is indelibly etched in everyone’s memory, along with the line “worst president in U.S. history,” whenever Biden’s name comes up.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board