President Biden warned Democratic donors at a Chicago fundraiser late Wednesday that decades-high inflation will “scare the living hell out of everybody” as the party faces the prospect of big defeats in November’s midterm elections.
“We can’t let this happen, guys,” Biden said. “So, we have to — we have to — and it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard, because inflation is going to scare the living hell out of everybody.”
The president went on to suggest that his administration has done a poor job touting Democrats’ accomplishments to voters and vowed to be more vocal about making the party’s case in the future.
“We’re making progress, but there’s going to be a way to go,” Biden said before casting blame for America’s skyrocketing prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. “Our inflation rate is lower than almost any other nation — industrial nation in the world. We’re in a situation where we find ourselves with supply chain problems and Putin’s gas tax in the extreme.”
Adding that “we have a problem to deal with,” Biden said the Democrats have to show voters why their agenda is different than the “MAGA Republicans.”
“We got to take the fight to them,” he said. “We got to make our case and make it very strongly, in my opinion.”
Earlier Wednesday, the president admitted that annual inflation was still at “unacceptably high” levels after data showed that it had fallen off slightly to 8.3% in April but still hovered around 40-year highs after hitting 8.5% in March.
Biden, who has been ramping up his attacks on Republicans in recent weeks, also claimed a leaked draft decision from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito shows the high court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade and jeopardize other rights.
“If you read the opinion — if it turns out to be the same opinion — [it] basically says there is no such thing as a right to privacy. Mark my words: If that decision holds, it’s not only we’re going to be fighting for a woman’s right to control her own body and the brutality that goes along with having to give birth in a circumstance that is something beyond what — that can be tolerated, but what else is going to happen?” the president said.
“They’re going to go after the right of the — Supreme Court decision on the right of same-sex marriage. They’re going to go after — they’re going to — we’re going to be back to Griswold vs. Connecticut, where there was a time in Connecticut law where it said a married couple, in the privacy of their own bedroom, cannot use contraception; it was a decision — the government can make the decision you can’t do that,” added Biden, who predicted that such decisions would “further split the United States.”
“We’re going to be arguing about things we shouldn’t have to argue about,” he said.
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