Appearing on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports Monday afternoon, NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor worried that the false spin from the Biden White House that the war in Ukraine was to blame for soaring inflation and high gas prices was not working with American voters. She cited the abysmal numbers for the President in NBC’s latest poll and fretted that Democrats have a “messaging” problem.
“And Bill McInturf, the Republican partner with the Democratic partner, of course in our poll....is calling these catastrophic results for Democrats,” Mitchell noted while referencing the low poll numbers for Biden, and the Democrats overall, heading into the November midterm elections. Noting voter concerns of over the cost of living, she asked Alcindor: “Yamiche, how does the President now focus on the economy?”
Predictably, Alcindor didn’t see Biden’s unpopularity as the result of policy failures, he just needed a better PR strategy: “What this poll essentially tells the President and Democrats is that they have to be messaging better, that they have to be talking about the things that Americans are listing as their priority.” She assured that her pals in the administration were working on it: “And when I talk to White House officials, they understand that there is this real messaging issue that has to happen.”
She was particularly concerned with the fact that White House attempts to blame months of record inflation and surging gas prices on the weeks-old war in Ukraine had failed:
Especially when you look at this poll, the number that jumped out to me was the fact that 38% of Americans are blaming Biden’s policies for inflation and gas prices and only 6% are blaming Russia. Remember that President Biden wanted to call this Putin’s price hike. Remember, that was the sort of White House messaging.
It wasn’t just “White House messaging,” the leftist media – especially MSNBC and NBC – eagerly repeated the dishonest talking point:
In fact, a Media Research Center study found that from Februrary 24 to March 21, the network morning and evening newscasts on NBC, ABC, and CBS blamed Russia for high gas prices a whopping 33 times, while blaming Biden only a paltry 3 times during the same time period.
However, despite going all-in for Biden, the media narrative did not sell with Americans, prompting Alcindor’s anxiety for Democrats on Monday.
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Here is a transcript of the March 28 exchange:
12:36 PM ET
(...)
ANDREA MITCHELL: And Bill McInturf, the Republican partner with the Democratic partner, of course in our poll, Bill McInturf is calling these catastrophic results for Democrats. Yamiche, how does the President now focus on the economy? He’s coming off of this European trip, which might give him some elevation in the polls for his show of strength, we don’t know. We can’t predict that. This doesn’t reflect that. But perhaps starting today, we now know he’s going to take questions at 2:00 in that event with the budget. So today he can talk about gas prices, he can talk about inflation, and about what he’s trying to do with the budget and focus more on the economy.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: What this poll essentially tells the President and Democrats is that they have to be messaging better, that they have to be talking about the things that Americans are listing as their priority. Ukraine of course is something that the President didn’t pick to be talking about, but he had to deal with that. And when I talk to White House officials, they understand that there is this real messaging issue that has to happen.
Especially when you look at this poll, the number that jumped out to me was the fact that 38% of Americans are blaming Biden’s policies for inflation and gas prices and only 6% are blaming Russia. Remember that President Biden wanted to call this Putin’s price hike. Remember, that was the sort of White House messaging. So this really goes to the idea that the President – and the White House says that they have always been focused on cost of living and the economy but this really needs to be, in some ways, a re-centering of that while also having to deal with what’s going on abroad.
MITCHELL: We’re going to see their first attempt at this at 2:00 today. We’ll of course be carrying it live. A big challenge for this White House.
(...)
