A new poll brought dire news to President Joe Biden and his reelection chances this year, and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was keenly aware of it.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, Jean-Pierre was asked about several issues plaguing the Biden administration, even despite positive developments on the economy. Jean-Pierre was happy to tout the progress of Bidenomics, but cautioned that Americans might still have to be patient.
Some of those Americans, namely Black and Hispanic Americans, have apparently lost patience with Biden, according to a new USA Today/Suffolk poll. After strong support in 2020, Biden’s support among Black voters is now 63 percent compared to 87 percent four years ago. And Hispanic voters now favor former President Donald Trump by five points (39 percent to 34 percent) after they supported Biden to the tune of 65 percent to 32 percent.
Co-host Willie Geist asked Jean-Pierre flat-out: “How do you explain those numbers?”
After a heavy sigh, Jean-Pierre noted that she had to mind the Hatch Act when Trump’s name came up, but went on to cite good economic data related specifically to the Black and Hispanic communities:
Black community, when the president walked in, unemployment was at 9.2 percent. Now it’s under it’s under 6 percent. That’s because of Bidenomics, as we started this conversation. Very similarly in the Latino community,
we saw unemployment go down. And we saw, also when you think about wealth, the wealth gap, the economic wealth, that grew with both communities.So, look, the president has always, always put equity at the center of every policy he’s put forward, every legislation that he’s put forward, because we understand that many communities have been left behind, have been left behind.
That was maybe half the answer Geist was looking for, so he pushed Jean-Pierre again:
Geist: How do you explain the groups that have supported Joe Biden for so long, Democrats for so long now kind of looking around, actually. And among young voters, too, not just that they’re looking at Donald Trump, but they’re looking at other choices. How do you explain them sort of straying from this president, from the Democratic Party?Jean-Pierre: Look, we understand what the American people went through these past three years, right? We came out of a pandemic, a pandemic that we haven’t seen in a hundred years. And when the president walked in, the economy was upside-down. And so we get it. We get that, so it’s going to take a little bit of time for folks to feel what the Bidenomics has been able to do. That’s not something that I’m saying. That’s something that economists have said. Right? It takes a little bit of time. But
it doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean that the president is not going to continue to work.
Watch the video above via MSNBC.