“Morning Joe” was fed up Monday with President Joe Biden’s “anemic” approval rating, the media coverage surrounding his misfires compared to his successes and how concerns over his age seem to outweigh the fact that he’s “had more bipartisan legislation than any president this century.”
Inviting Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf on air to discuss his new article titled “Call It the Biden Two-Step: How to Stumble, and Grow Stronger,” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough shined light on the fact that there may be more about Biden’s administration to applaud than first meets the eye.
Brzezinski first raised the idea that, echoing tweets by Rothkopf last week, many in media feel “they can’t even do press on Biden that has any positive narrative because it might seem imbalanced,” while right-wing media unabashedly only covers the missteps — or in one case last week, Biden’s literal fall on stage.
“The bottom line is: There have been some wins,” Brzezinski said. “Some real wins.”
“The thing is, though, not even some wins, David,” Scarborough jumped in. “A historic number of bipartisan pieces of legislation. You can just look at data, you can look at the evidence, you can look at the hard facts: Joe Biden is already, in three years, had more bipartisan legislation than, I mean, any president this century. Certainly more than Donald Trump, more than Barack Obama during his eight years, more than George W. Bush during his eight years. I think, probably, more than Bill Clinton during his eight years, though Bill Clinton did have a good bit of bipartisan legislation, as well.”
“Certainly, in three years’ time,” Scarborough continued, “he has done more as far as legislation goes, and bipartisan legislation, than any president this century. We can say it. It’s true.”
Rothkopf agreed, and reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling is just the latest example. The columnist emphasized that “Biden has passed 300 pieces of bipartisan legislation, or signed 300 pieces of bipartisan legislation, in the first 2.5 years. He has created more jobs or overseen the creation of more jobs in 2.5 years than any other president has in four years.”
Looking to right-wing media coverage of the president and particularly to last week’s “slipping on a stage,” Rothkopf slammed: “Of course they don’t want to talk about the facts — the facts are kryptonite to the Republicans.”
“So why are Joe Biden’s approval ratings so anemic?” Scarborough asked. (As recently as last month, polls out of Reuters determined the president’s approval rating at just 54%.)
Rothkopf blamed the “media bubble” of the Right and an over-corrected concern of journalistic bias from the Left.
“Well, first of all, Joe Biden’s approval ratings are based on what the coverage is, and you’ve got half the country looking at a media bubble that doesn’t cover his successes,” he explained. “And then you’ve got the other half of the coverage looking at stories where, as Mika said a minute ago, people don’t want to say, ‘Hey, look, the president’s doing all this good stuff!’ Because that might seem, you know, unbalanced. ‘We’ve gotta offer the Republican side.’”
It was no surprise to the reporter that approval ratings are reporting down, because “if that story doesn’t get out, well, of course the approval ratings aren’t going to be quite as high,” Rothkopf said. “But having said that, in the last election, it was Biden candidates doing well, Trump candidates doing poorly. In the last presidential election, it was Biden winning, Trump losing.”
Watch Rothkopf’s full “Morning Joe” interview in the video above.
