During an interview with CNN aired on Monday’s “CNN Primetime,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) stated that President Joe Biden is performing well, and people have negative views of the economy because “we’ve been polarized and traumatized over the last five or six years” and we haven’t had “time to take a deep breath and reflect on it. What we’re experiencing is not unique in the United States at all, it’s a global phenomenon.”
While discussing the economy, CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash asked, “I want to talk about that as it relates to the headwinds that President Biden is facing when it comes to the perception, the gap as you call it, between how people think the economy is doing and how people feel the economy is doing. It is true unemployment is near all-time lows and inflation is back under 4%. Interest rates are high, gas prices are rising again, and the bottom line is, the majority of Americans just don’t feel good about the way things are. Is this just a messaging problem or [are] there more fundamental problems than that?”
Newsom responded, “Look, we’ve dealt with, we’ve been polarized and traumatized over the last five or six years. I don’t think any of us have given us time to take a deep breath and reflect on it. What we’re experiencing is not unique in the United States at all, it’s a global phenomenon. The issues of COVID and the stress it created, the supply chain impacts, what happened with the invasion in Ukraine, the impacts with OPEC Plus in particular — another reason we need to get off the dependency [on] fossil fuels — all of those things stack up at this moment. But, directionally, this President is performing. We’re seeing inflation down roughly two-thirds, just shy of two-thirds since its peak. That’s a directionally very positive sign. The lowest unemployment for blacks, Hispanics, and the disabled, 70-year lows for women in this country. With all due respect to the Republican Party, they can point the finger and say it could have been better, it could be better, they offer nothing in terms of alternative strategies to make it so.”
Bash then asked, “But Joe Biden is the President, and, so, the expectation and the sort of referendum is on the incumbent. Is there danger in telling people what the stats are and making them feel like they shouldn’t feel as bad as they do?”
Newsom answered, “No, I think you have to — you’ve got to feel people’s pain, you’ve got to acknowledge that. It’s why I began talking about how traumatized and polarized we’ve been, I’ve been talking about that stacking of stress and I’ve talking about the distress people are feeling and that sense of dislocation, disequilibrium, this notion that we are more disconnected in our politics. You see it on the nightly news, that stress and frustration that we haven’t come to grips with. All of that’s real and I think that is making it more challenging.”
Later, Newsom said that Biden has a strong record, but not all the world’s problems have been solved and people still are uneasy and anxious about the world they live in.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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