Biden Suggests Americans Are Not Sharp Enough to ‘Understand’ Supply Chain Issues

President Joe Biden appeared to slam the intelligence of most Americans on Monday by suggesting they aren’t smart enough to figure out or “understand” the supply chain crisis that continues to worsen under his administration.

Biden’s comments came as he was asked during a news conference to respond to criticism from Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., who said of the party’s progressive-moderate divide over spending: “Nobody elected him to be FDR, they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”

“I don’t intend to be anybody but Joe Biden, that’s who I am,” Biden responded. “What I’m trying to do is, do the things I ran on to do, and look, people out there are ordinary, hard-working Americans [who have been] put through the wringer the last couple of years.”

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“People are worried,” Biden continued, going on to suggest Americans just do not understand why “the price of agricultural products” has gone up.

Biden mocks Americans’ intelligence: “If we were all going out & having lunch together & I said let’s ask whoever’s in the next table, no matter what restaurant we’re in, have them explain the supply chain to us. Do you think they’d understand what we’re talking about?” pic.twitter.com/lHAwLJZBfy

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 6, 2021

“If we were all going out and having lunch together and I said, ‘Let’s ask whoever’s in the next table, no matter what restaurant we’re in, have them explain the supply chain to us.’ Do you think they’d understand what we’re talking about?” Biden said.

“They’re smart people,” he continued, but he concluded the current situation with the failing supply chain was a part of a “complicated world.”

“We’ve never faced anything like this,” Biden added. “You can understand why people are upset. Whether you have a PhD or you’re working in a restaurant, it’s confusing and so people are understandably worried.”

Fox News added: “Biden then said he was going to try and ‘explain to the American people’ what supply chain issues America faces, telling the reporters in the room who ‘write for a living’ that he has not seen any reporter ‘explain supply chain very well.’”

In fact, the bulk of the supply chain issues can be directly traced back to the global economic shutdown that occurred in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a virus with a 99-plus percent survival rate. Before then-President Donald Trump agreed to recommend a two-week shutdown to “slow the spread” of the virus, he was overseeing a widely successful economy and, in February 2020 — right before the shutdowns began — was in part responsible for a 3.5 percent unemployment rate, a 50-year low.

But Trump is gone and it’s Biden’s show now; so what is he and his administration doing to ease the supply chain crisis? For one, it might help if he did not have an errant Transportation secretary.

In mid-October, as the crisis continued to deepen, reports noted that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had been out of his office on paternity leave after he and his husband welcomed two newborns amid a worsening supply chain crisis that is vexing the Biden administration ahead of the traditionally busy holiday shopping season.

In fact, Buttigieg had been out on leave since August, nearly two months now as the supply and transport crisis has worsened.

Politico reported:

While U.S. ports faced anchor-to-anchor traffic and Congress nearly melted down over the president’s infrastructure bill in recent weeks, the usually omnipresent Transportation secretary was lying low.

One of the White House’s go-to communicators didn’t appear on TV. He was absent on Capitol Hill during the negotiations over the bill he had been previously helping sell to different members of Congress. Conservative critics tried (unsuccessfully) to get #WheresPete to trend and Fox News ran a story on October 4 with the headline: “Buttigieg quiet on growing port congestion as shipping concerns build ahead of holidays.”

They didn’t previously announce it, but Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies.

“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation told Politico. “He has been ramping up activities since then.”

As he does that, Buttigieg will “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children,” the spokesperson added.