Fox & Friends viewers heard something they don’t often hear on Thursday morning: a defence of President Joe Biden’s record from one of the show’s most familiar faces.
Later in the day on Thursday, Mr Biden is traveling to Virginia to give a speech on the economic progress the country has made since he first took office more than two years ago — and in a segment of the morning talk programme previewing the speech, Brian Kilmeade urged Mr Biden to stand on his record instead of attacking Republicans.
“To me, this would be the perfect time to say, listen, our numbers aren’t perfect, but we have better numbers than any other country in the world,” Mr Kilmeade said. “And compare yourself to China, compared to Russia, compared to any European nation... you know, Japan’s got this low inflation and people have certain areas — our numbers look good.”
Mr Kilmeade couched his praise of Mr Biden’s economic record in criticism of reports that he will use his speech to go after Republicans for blocking parts of his economic agenda, but he doubled down on the substance of his praise moments later.
“I’d say, hey, listen, look at me,” Mr Kilmeade said. “We have some challenges, but compared to everybody else, we’ve worked our way out of it.”
The praise of Mr Biden’s record took some viewers by surprise — heartening some observers sympathetic to the president who rarely see him praised on the right-wing network.
There is ample quantitative evidence to suggest that Kilmeade’s praise of Mr Biden is well-founded. The country’s unemployment rate remains low, its GDP is growing, and the runaway inflation rate that dominated headlines for much of the last year appears to be easing somewhat.
Given the state of the economy when Mr Biden took office two years ago, with much of the country still restricting normal activity in an effort to stop the spread of Covid-19, some see the positive economic numbers as a significant achievement for the president.
Still, many Americans are feeling economic pain. Mr Biden’s presidency has also seen a renewed wave of labour organising in the United States as workers attempt to respond to pressures from rising rents and inflation.
It remains to be seen exactly what Mr Biden will include in his address on the economy in Virginia, which comes just a day after Vice President Kamala Harris was in California meeting with victims of the mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.
