Recent polls show President Biden’s popularity declining, his fellow Democrats are upset that he is not as angry as they are, and the war in Ukraine continues, like the pandemic, gun violence, inflation, and the Supreme Court decisions. It seems a future residence for the president is a senior citizen’s home and not the Oval Office.
Each week there is a more challenging issue facing Biden, and looming over it all is a possible redo by his nemesis, whether in real form or in Trumpism.
Confronted by a matrix of challenges, Biden certainly doesn’t need his base and colleagues in a snit and sniping at him.
In an attempt to waylay some of the attacks and criticism, on Monday Biden addressed the new ban on assault weapons, declaring, “I’m determined to ban these weapons again and high-capacity magazines. I’m not going to stop until we do it.”
But even this promise was not enough, at least for one attendee at the White House ceremony, when Biden was repeatedly interrupted by Manuel Oliver, the parent of a teenager killed in the 2018 Parkland High School shooting. He was eventually escorted from the event.
Oliver’s outbursts are perhaps what Democrats would like to see coming from Biden, but they should know by now that he is not that kind of leader. He prefers to calmly state his case, and, to some extent his critics ought to accept that demeanor since it was effective in keeping Trump from a second term.
Still, Biden may have something in his favor when at the close of the seventh session of the Jan. 6 select committee Tuesday afternoon, vice chair Liz Chaney revealed that in the next upcoming session was a witness who said they were contacted by Trump. This was a stunning bombshell that could get Trump jammed on tampering with a witness.
It’s to be seen how far this will go to alleviate some of the pressure the president is currently experiencing, and most importantly how far the new piece of possibly incriminating evidence against Trump will go toward bringing him before the bar of justice and having him face criminal charges. Is sedition waiting in the wings for Trump?