Jill Biden on Biden’s hindered progress: ‘He had so many hopes’

• First Lady Jill Biden expressed frustration with President Joe Biden’s stalled tenure at a private fundraiser.
• She said she felt hamstrung in her role as first lady due to unexpected crises.
• Biden expects to meet with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, next week.
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First Lady Jill Biden expressed frustration with President Joe Biden’s stalled tenure, During a private Democratic National Committee fundraiser on Saturday.

During the event in Nantucket, Massachusetts, the first lady stated that her husband has been consistently challenged by unanticipated crises while in office, blaming them on global issues.

According to a recent  Siena College poll, the President’s job approval rating is 33 percent, with only 13 percent of Americans believing the country is heading in the right direction.

“[The President] had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment,” Biden said at a private home on the coast of Massachusetts.

Biden also stated that she expects to meet with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, next week. She last met with Zelenska in May during an unannounced trip to Ukraine.

She did not provide any details about the agenda for her upcoming meeting, and  Media has reached out to Biden’s office for more information.

Domestically, Biden cited gun violence, the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, and the Ukraine war as issues that the President was unaware of.

“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” she said. “Who would have ever thought about what happened [with the Supreme Court overturning] Roe v Wade? Well, maybe we saw it coming, but still we didn’t believe it. The gun violence in this country is absolutely appalling. We didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming.”

Biden admitted that she, too, felt hamstrung in her role as first lady, and that she had been unexpectedly pulled in directions other than the one she had planned.

“I was saying to myself, ‘Okay, I was second lady. I worked on community colleges. I worked on military families. I’ve worked on cancer.’ They were supposed to be my areas of focus. But then when we got [in the White House,] I had to be, with all that was happening, the first lady of the moment.”

The first lady expressed her displeasure with the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, which ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. While she supported the right to protest, she believes that being angry about the decision is insufficient – contradicting the President’s remarks last week, in which he encouraged women to “keep protesting,” adding that protesting is “critically important.”

Biden stated that she told her own family members that they should consider doing more than protesting.

“So many young girls, my own grandchildren included, went up to the Supreme Court and marched.

‘OK, good for you,’ I say. But what are your plans for the future? You feel good about yourself because you spoke up, but what do you plan to do next? ‘What are your plans?'”

The White House has acknowledged that the path forward to restoring abortion rights is narrow and uncertain at this time.

During her remarks, Biden also slammed Congress, blaming Republicans for the administration’s stalled agenda. Joe Biden’s expansive Build Back Better plan, which would have expanded the nation’s social safety net, took another hit this week when West Virginia Sen.

Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat, dismissed the bill’s inclusion of any climate or tax provisions. Democrats needed Manchin’s support to pass the legislation along party lines in a process known as budget reconciliation, which requires all 50 Democratic senators to agree to advance legislation.

“I know there are so many nay-sayers who say we’ll get slammed in the midterms. Okay. The Republicans are working hard, they stick together, for good or evil. So, we just have to work harder,” she said.

The first lady attended her second DNC fundraiser on Saturday as part of a two-day trip to Massachusetts. She spoke at a private event in Andover on Thursday, primarily about political action.

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