WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday criticized Republican-led states for how they handled their economies in recent years and acknowledged that Democrats could have done a better job selling their accomplishments to voters.
“Red states really screwed up in terms of the way they handled their economy and the way they handled manufacturing and the way they handled access to supply chains,” Biden told MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell in a taped interview during an explanation of why the administration had “invested more in red states than blue states” through various measures, shortly after being asked about his economic response to Covid.
In the wide-ranging interview, Biden also reflected on his handling of the economy, which became one of the biggest issues driving voters’ preferences in November.
He indicated that Democrats, including him, missed some opportunities to better communicate to voters their involvement in popular programs or infrastructure projects.
Biden said he made a “mistake” in “not getting our allies to acknowledge that the Democrats did this.”
If Democratic legislation was responsible for a new bridge, “let people know that this was something the Democrats did, that it was done by the party,” he said.
“Ironically, I almost spent too much time on the policy and not enough time on the politics,” he said.
Biden also brought up signing stimulus checks.
He said that “it did cross my mind” to sign the checks, adding that President-elect Donald Trump’s putting his name on stimulus checks “wasn’t a stupid thing for him to do.”
Paper checks for Covid relief payments under a 2020 law had Trump’s name printed on them.
“It helped him a lot, and it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them,” Biden said, referring to Democrats’ messaging around subsequent Covid relief.
In March 2021, Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill dubbed the American Rescue Plan, which injected money into an economy that had been ravaged by the pandemic. Congress passed the legislation along party lines.
A section of the law provided $1,400 in direct cash payments to individuals within a certain income bracket. The White House had touted the plan as leading to a “historic recovery across the country.”
In his farewell address Wednesday night, Biden delivered a series of warnings about threats to the country’s future, including an “oligarchy taking shape” and “the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex.”
The interview Thursday was one of the few he has done during his final weeks in office. He also gave an interview to USA Today this month.
The White House has not announced plans for Biden to hold a final news conference with reporters, as is customary for an outgoing president.
