President Joe Biden turned Detroit into a punchline in a speech to big labor Tuesday.
Speaking to the AFL-CIO, Biden cracked that his former boss always gave him the toughest assignments. Former President Obama, who once reportedly advised to never “underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up,” once told his vice president to mend the Motor City.
“President Obama used to give me all the good assignments. Well, I remember one day, he walked in, not a joke and said, ‘Joe, fix Detroit,’” Biden recalled. “I said, ‘Ok, no problem.’ No, you think I’m kidding? You think I’m kidding? What I didn’t realize is I didn’t know a lot about the cities.”
BIDEN: "Well I remember one day, walked in, not a joke and said, 'Joe, fix Detroit.' I said, 'Ok, no problem.' No, you think I'm kidding? You think I'm kidding?
"What I didn't realize is (unintelligible) the cities!" pic.twitter.com/RP68FqRF1u
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 14, 2022
Biden even crossed himself as he spoke, seemingly at the thought of the daunting task of addressing the Michigan city’s problems. He was speaking at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia, where he urged labor leaders to take up the “fight” in support of his agenda.
If Obama indeed did ask Biden to “fix Detroit,” it appears not to have been a mission he accomplished. In 2020, Detroit had a rate of 2,248.4 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, behind only Memphis as the highest rate in the country among big cities. The same year, Detroit had a homicide rate of 49.7 for every 100,000 people, while the national average was just 6.5 per 100,000.
While speaking to the friendly big labor audience, Biden blasted what he decried as the “ultra-MAGA” wing of the Republican Party.
“I believe in bipartisanship. But I have no illusions about this Republican Party. … The fact is Republicans in Congress are still in the grip of the ultra-MAGA agenda,” he claimed.
Making fun of what was once labor’s biggest stronghold when General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler turned out American cars and assembly line jobs paid big wages didn’t seem to rankle the audience, which laughed along with Biden’s story. Biden’s appearance before the AFL-CIO — and his staunch support for unions as a whole — is standard Democratic politics, say conservative critics.
“Given that Big Labor’s forced dues political war chest was critical to putting Joe Biden in the White House, it’s no surprise he is going to the AFL-CIO convention to kiss the ring,” Mark Mix, president of the National Right To Work Committee, said in a statement to The Daily Wire prior to the president’s speech.