On Saturday, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, appeared in an interview with Fox News where he slammed the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan and the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. In the interview, he said that voters will remember these failures in the midterm elections this year.
Cassidy started off by discussing poll numbers that show that President Biden’s disapproval rating currently stands at 57 percent.
“What is there to approve? The Afghanistan pull out, raging inflation, fuel prices, food prices, the disaster at the border, covid not being controlled, we need a change in 2022,” Cassidy said in the segment. “We need a change in 2022.”
In the interview, host Edward Lawrence noted that if the country goes back into lockdown, it could force a massive social spending package to pass Congress. Cassidy said that he does not think we will go back into lockdown, and thinks there needs to be better solutions than “Build Back Better” and other legislation the Biden administration is pushing.
“I don’t think there’s going to be more lockdowns. The situation is totally different. If there were a lockdown now there would have to be a completely different rationale than there was before. And that in itself would call into question the competence, would further call into question the competence of the administration. We can get out of this, but we have to have a strategy, the American people have to buy into it, and we have to go forward. What we have now is not being successful,” Cassidy explained in the interview.
Lawrence then discussed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which was led by Cassidy and ten other senators. Cassidy explained that the bill, which should have been passed over the summer, included money for supply chains. Lawrence inquired if the delay in passing the infrastructure bill, which contributed to the supply chain crisis, will be on voters’ minds when they head to the polls in November.
“I don’t know if they’ll connect the dots that closely. They’ll look though and see that this administration has not shown very much competence. Period. End of story,” Cassidy stated in the interview. “We could have more quickly started to address the logistical issues, and the bipartisan infrastructure bill does that. But there’s a heck of a lot this administration has failed at I think voters will remember.”
Biden’s taking poll numbers, record-high inflation, and his poorly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan have likely prompted several Democratic lawmakers to not seek reelection, as we’ve covered. According to Ballotpedia, 23 House Democrats are not seeking reelection in 2022.
In an interview with Fox News in November, former Florida governor and current Sen. Rick Scott (R) said that Republicans are going to do “unbelievably” well in 2022.
“We’re going to take back the Senate, absolutely,” Scott told Fox News. “We’re going to do unbelievably well in 2022 because we have the right message.”
In a separate interview, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) told Fox News “I think the elections in Virginia, the elections in New Jersey, they’re foreshadowing what’s coming next year in 2022."