At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, a reporter questioned press secretary Jen Psaki on how supply-chain issues may affect the holiday shopping season. She explained that the Biden administration has been working for months to address bottlenecks, but the presidential spokesperson wasn’t prepared to make predictions.
The reporter added, “Can this administration guarantee that holiday packages will arrive on time?” Psaki replied, “We are not the Postal Service or UPS or FedEx…. What we can do is use every lever at the federal government disposal to reduce delays, to ensure that we are addressing bottlenecks in the system, including ports and the need for them to be open longer hours so that goods can arrive. And we can continue to press not only workers and unions, but also companies to take as many steps as they can to reduce these delays.”
It was an early hint about a burgeoning effort to blame President Joe Biden for delayed holiday deliveries. Raw Story added yesterday:
Thanks to the ongoing supply chain crisis, the latest line of attack against President Biden coming from conservatives is whether or not presents will arrive in time for Christmas. In a tweet this Thursday, Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan thought it’d be good idea to further push that narrative.
“Christmas presents were never late when President Trump was in charge,” the Republican congressman wrote.
First, Christmas presents were absolutely late when Donald Trump was in the White House. I realize that memories can be selectively short in politics, but last December wasn’t that long ago.
Second, blaming Biden on supply-chain issues he did not create seems a little silly, even by 2021 standards. And third, U.S. Postal Service delays are largely the result of policies implemented by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — whom Trump, not Biden, chose for the job. Nevertheless, there are signs a new talking point is taking shape before our eyes: If you’re not fully satisfied with your holiday season experiences as a consumer, we’re apparently supposed to blame the president, whether that makes sense or not. Update: The House Republican Conference picked up on this same line of criticism this morning.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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