If ever there were a politician with a bad habit of bragging, it's Joe Biden. This is the guy who once bragged to a voter: "I think I have a much higher IQ than you." Who during the 2020 campaign challenged another voter to a push-up contest. And who bragged that back in high school, he would have taken Trump "behind the gym and beat the hell out of him."
So it was strange that Joe Scarborough would suggest, discussing Biden's long-delayed press conference of yesterday, that unlike Trump at his first presser, Biden didn't brag.
Let's compare statements made by Trump and Biden at their respective first press conferences.
Trump: There's never been a presidency that's done so much in such a short period of time.
Biden: No other country in the world has even come close—not even close—to what we are doing.
The statements sound awfully similar, don't they? You might say that Trump was bragging about his presidency, whereas Biden was bragging about America. But Biden was surely expecting that America's achievements would redound to his credit.
And then, there was something downright deceptive in what Biden set forth as his new goal for his first 100 days. He said:
"Today I'm setting a second goal. And that is, by my 100th day in office we will have administered 200 million shots in people's arms. That's right: 200 million shots in 100 days. I know it's ambitious. Twice our original goal."
200 million shots in the first 100 days. Ambitious? Really? Let's look at the facts. As of today about 133 million shots have been administered. So 67 million more would need to be given by April 30th, Biden's 100th day in office. That means, we need to give 1.86 million shots per day. But we are currently giving . . . 2.51 million shots per day! So Biden's "ambitious" goal could be met by REDUCING the shot rate by 36%!
It would be like a baseball player who's currently batting .251 telling his manager that for the next 67 days, his goal is to bat .186! Don't think that would have gone over too well with Casey Stengel. Biden's "ambitious" goal should similarly be laughed out of the locker room by the American people.
Joe Scarborough falsely suggesting that in contrast with President Trump, President Biden didn't brag at his first press conference was sponsored in part by Liberty Mutual and DirecTV.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
3/26/21
6:02 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: Yesterday, even if you didn’t agree with Joe Biden ideologically on every point, even if you were concerned about, maybe, his position on some issues, chances are good if you are an American and you were watching that, you noticed a change of tone.
You actually heard somebody that was trying to bring Americans together. Somebody who said, I’ve been elected to be a problem solver. To bring this country together, as opposed to, again, Donald Trump being extraordinarily combative, a couple weeks in, talking about no president has ever done as much as I — again, it was just — it was all about him. It was all a bunch of lies.
PRESIDENT TRUMP [at first press conference, 2017]: There's never been a presidency that's done so much in such a short period of time.
CNN
New Day
3/26/21
6:20 am EDTJOE BIDEN [at first press conference]: Today I'm setting a second goal. And that is, we will by my 100th day in office have administered 200 million shots in people's arms. That's right: 200 million shots in 100 days. I know it's ambitious. Twice our original goal. But no other country in the world has even come close—not even close—to what we are doing.
