Over the weekend, Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes held an interview with President Joe Biden. See below for some of the highlights, starting with his thoughts on the annual inflation rate which came in at 8.3% for the month of August.
(Portions of the transcript and interview may have been edited by CBS. There exists these incomplete sentences in the video and transcript. We may never know what the President actually meant).
President Joe Biden: Well, first of all, let’s put this in perspective. Inflation rate month to month was just-- just an inch, hardly at all, [Transcript ends].
Scott Pelley asked if this was good news, the President responded:
No, I’m not saying it is good news. But it was 8.2% or-- 8.2% before. I mean, it’s not-- you’re ac-- we act-- make it sound like all of a sudden, “My god, it went to 8.2%.” It’s been— [Transcript ends].
In both instances the transcript abruptly ends mid-sentence, which may be unfair to the President. Nonetheless, Scott countered, saying it’s the highest inflation rate in 40 years, at which Biden said:
I got that. But guess what we are. We’re in a position where, for the last several months, it hasn’t spiked. It has just barely-- it’s been basically even. And in the meantime, we created all these jobs and-- and prices-- have-- have gone up, but they’ve come down for energy.
How exactly (price) inflation is to come under control is never mentioned. To this point, Biden was asked if inflation would “continue to decline,” he answered:
No, I’m telling the American people that we’re gonna get control of inflation. And their prescription drug prices are gonna be a hell of a lotta lower. Their health care costs are gonna be a lot lower. Their basic costs for everybody, their energy prices are gonna be lower.
He even invoked Fedspeak, saying:
We hope we can have what they say, “a soft landing,” a transition to a place where we don’t lose the gains that I ran to make in the first place for middle-class folks, being able to generate good-paying jobs and-- expansion.
This is pretty much the gist of the interview. The reporter asked real questions but was never given honest answers. To be fair, when someone doesn’t understand the cause of inflation, they cannot be expected to know how to resolve the problems inflation creates.
A lot more was discussed, such as the Trump raid, a potential war with China, and banning of assault rifles. But this exchange sticks out the most, invoking ideas that something is not quite right. According to transcript:
Scott Pelley: How would you say your mental focus is?
President Joe Biden: Oh, it’s focused. I’d say it’s-- I think it’s-- I-- I haven’t-- look, I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself, my own head, the number of years. I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than fly. I mean, it’s just not-- I haven’t-- observed anything in terms of-- there’s not things I don’t do now that I did before, whether it’s physical, or mental, or anything else.
With Biden in charge of fiscal policy, and Powell overseeing monetary policy, our economic woes shouldn’t be surprising. However, no matter how easy it is to criticize Biden (D) and Powell (R), it’s important to remember they are only mouthpieces to an apparatus much larger. They are the figureheads of “the State,” or an entity that “does not produce anything but rather steals resources from those engaged in production.” Sure, some are better spoken than others, but this provides little comfort, even if it makes for great television.
