WH Spox Mocks GOP Poll on Biden Plan: ‘Maybe Little Caesars Has A Poll On How They’ve Got The Best Pizza’
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates mocked a Republican polling memo on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Plan during his first Air Force One briefing.
Bates is normally the name you see on White House comments and responses to print stories or the face you see flanking Jen Psaki as she emerges from the press office. But on Tuesday, he briefed reporters aboard Air Force One for the first time.
Toward the end of the gaggle, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked Bates about a polling memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee and got a personalized zinger in reply.
“Do you want to address this NRCC poll about Build Back Better?” Holland asked.
“You know, I would like to speak to that and I’m glad you raise it,” Bates replied, and after a pause, cracked to Holland “So, the thing is about that, Steve, I don’t know if maybe Fox Business has a poll on how they have better coverage than Reuters, or maybe Little Caesars has a poll on how they’ve got the best pizza in America.”
“But in all seriousness, virtually all of your news organizations have polled Build Back Better, joined by many other reputable pollsters. They all show the contents of Build Back Better resonate incredibly strongly with a big majority of Americans,” Bates said and ticked off some of the components of the plan.
He went on to accuse Republicans of “actively rooting for” inflation, and “protect(ing) tax giveaways for the wealthy and for big corporations.”
“Also, if you look at that poll, they need to lie about what’s in the policy, which, I think, says everything,” Bates said.
The memo did not include topline questions or crosstabs and was based on a survey of “1,000 voters across 85 Battleground Congressional
Districts.”
But in national poll after national poll, Biden’s plan and its components poll extremely well — some as high as 78 percent — and the infrastructure bill that Biden just signed into law is extremely popular as well.
Listen above via The White House.
