Fox News host Chris Wallace discussed President Biden’s first address to Congress on Wednesday night, saying that he believed the speech — which introduced multiple policy proposals that are estimated to cost trillions of dollars — would be popular among Americans.
“You know, I think this is going to be a popular speech with the American public,” Wallace said. “He offered a lot of stuff. Four trillion dollars will buy a lot of stuff, from millions of jobs to child care to community health centers, all kinds of stuff, community colleges.”
He added that Biden said people are not going to have to pay for it, a concept that would be popular among viewers.
“Offering a lot of stuff and saying, ‘You’re not going to have to pay for it’ is pretty popular. And I think they’ve made a calculation that after COVID, that people have come to have a different feeling about government,” he added. “That they now feel more trusting and more [the] need of government and so where this might have turned a lot of people off, and probably still will, they believe the majority of people are going to say, the government’s here, and they’re here to help you.”
Not all viewers appeared to agree with Wallace’s take on Biden’s rhetoric. The Daily Wire reported that the speech was not popular among many online viewers. “Aside from generally low views, left-leaning news stations and outlets that streamed the speech, like USAToday, NBC News, CBS News, CNBC News, and CNN all had ‘thumbs down’ reactions outnumbering ‘thumbs up’ reactions. One of the only major news stations to have approving reacts outnumbering disapproving reacts was ABC News,” the outlet reported.
Many people also criticized Biden for including what they believe to be false claims, as well as being divisive. The Daily Wire reported:
Democrat President Joe Biden faced intense backlash over the speech he delivered to Congress on Wednesday night with many critics calling it extreme, full of false statements, and divisive.
Biden spent the night pushing for big government spending, mocking gun owners, and saying that he did not want conflict with America’s enemies. Biden failed to give the Trump administration any credit for Operation Warp Speed, which did the heavy lifting when it came to getting vaccines developed in historic time.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke out against the ideas that Biden discussed in his speech, saying, “If I ever hear that Joe Biden’s a moderate again, I’m going to throw up.”
Later in the interview, Graham said, “I saw a socialist tonight. I saw a socialist. What did he tell us? To save American families we’re going to grow the government. The bottom line now is ‘infrastructure’ is about climate change; it’s not about roads and bridges, and he talked about Russia and China in terms that were really unnerving to me. Do you think, after listening to Joe Biden tonight, that anybody at the Kremlin is worried? Do you think the Chinese have any fear in them after hearing his speech tonight?”
He added, “It was incoherent on foreign policy. He talked about leaving Afghanistan as if there’s no consequence to leaving. He turned down sound military advice. This is the same Joe Biden that allowed ISIS to come back by leaving Iraq. You just wait and see what happens.”