Oh no, Joe, please don’t go on Kimmel

From JFK to Nixon to Trump, the presidential appearance on late-night TV has become something of a right-of-passage, a time for presidents to boast of accomplishments while showing off a bit of their lighter sides. Biden will make his first late-night appearance with a one-on-one interview with host Jimmy Kimmel. Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich thinks that given the current tumultuous state of the nation, this isn’t the right time for Biden to strut his stuff:

The news that President Biden is going to go on the late night comedy show is a pretty good indication of how totally out of touch with reality the Biden White House is. 

Now, my wife Calista just filled up her car. For $104.50. She was in a state of shock. Now, when people are paying that kind of money at the gas station, or the woman in Pennsylvania who said she had to go to five different stores to buy instant formula, and she couldn’t afford the gasoline to go to five different stores. Or you look at what’s happening with the price of food, or you look at the skyrocketing crime rates around the country. 

But I think the Biden team doesn’t understand their problems — not language, it’s not communication. It’s not humor. Their problem is things aren’t working. Americans know they’re not working, and Americans are in pain. 

And so, frankly, somebody pointed out to me, it’s not necessarily clever to go on a comedy show and be funny at a time when people all around you are in pain, but what they’d like you to do is actually stay in the White House. He is, after all, the President with the largest number of days of vacation of any modern president. They’d like him to stay in the White House and fix the problems. But I think they can’t fix the problems, because in fact, they are the problems. The best they can do is play with words, and try to find a new way to approach things. 

This I think is going to spiral downward this summer. I have a hunch, you’re going to see electricity, brownouts, you’re going to see a whole range of continuing problems. In terms of crime, you’re going to see continued massive illegal immigration. And the world is going to become steadily more dangerous because pieces are falling apart. Sanctions on Russia aren’t working. And there’s no evidence that the Chinese are particularly afraid of us, which puts a real threat about Taiwan, and the North Koreans are behaving in their usual unpredictable way. And the Iranians are steadily moving to increase their grip on the Middle East. 

So whether it’s overseas or at home, whether it’s the economy or physical safety in big cities, the Biden administration doesn’t seem to have a grip on the real world. And that should worry all of us.