also come together on immigration. make it a bipartisan mission once again. a major theme in last night s state of the union, president joe biden calling on a divided congress to work together and pass legislation on several key issues. however, some members of the gop decided to make a scene during the speech heckling the president over the budget and the border. and then there was george santos who found himself in a tense exchange with of all people republican senator mitt romney. we ll show you what romney had to say about the freshman congressman who s facing multiple legal investigations. good morning and welcome to wail on this wednesday, february 8th. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for starting your day with us. president joe biden delivered
greene called president biden a liar, that is when the president was talking about republicans wanting to chip away retirement spending for social security and medicare. we also some some yell from republican lawmakers when president biden was talking about the fentanyl crisis in the u.s. saying we should close the border and one lawmaker even yelling out it s your fault. while we did see a lot of pleas for bipartisanship in the speech, there were those moments of bitter parsonship when we saw republican lawmakers try to stand up and interrupt the speech. and house speaker mccarthy had warned republicans not to do just that and yet some didn t listen. 12 different times president biden said for the congress to let them finish the job as the nation comes out of the pandemic and tries to repair the economy. but it also felt like as much as that s an earnest repeal for bipartisanship, it s also a trap republicans have laid.
legislation to look for something to get done. they re looking around congress, mayors, city officials, local police departments even to talk to them about what they can do in terms of training, hiring, different types of community intervention programs, those types of things that don t always come from congress and that he even knows the president isn t likely to come any time soon. so in the days before this speech, white house aides told me that what they hoped would happen would be a repeat of last year, a bunch of republicans screaming at the president, looking rude and angry in the process and despite warnings from kevin mccarthy ahead of time, that s exactly what happened. how do you perceive that playing to the average american watching at home last night? well, any time an average american i think is watching something like last night, it takes them into what we know to be true, while president biden wants to maintain normalcy, there s a large constituency wants to be a th
be retired on, have gone up repeatedly on that is why in places like my own state of wisconsin and elsewhere, the president is in trouble. neil: i am wondering, mark, what you make about it. the president kept crowing about numbers, there is a dispute of how many jobs were created versus those that were simply, you know, refilled after the covid scare. but the numbers are what the numbers are, traditionally favorable for who s ever sitting in the white house. not for this president. why? well, it is very important, if you are going for reelection and i think last night s speech was a reelection speech that people feel it made them better off and the economy is moving in the right direction, that is critical. the president was out there telling people that unemployment was low, inflation was coming down, things work and if not hunky-dory, approaching it, and look, the problem the administration has is they have always said that, from day one, and so, in some sense, there is a hu
anybody in good faith to talk about ways to lower the deficit, but that needs to be a separate conversation. we cannot have a situation where house republicans are getting away with hostage taking, hostage taking on the economy in order to cut social security and medicare. so we ve had a lot of discussions in recent days about some polls that have come out that show that the american people, despite the legislative record that the biden white house can show them, don t feel like the president has done enough. they don t feel like especially on issues of the economy that what the white house has done has broken through. so how do you change that? if the message hasn t landed yet, obviously last night s speech helped. you guys are going on the road starting today. how do you change that approach so americans do start listening? well, you know, you said it, john. last night the president had an opportunity to speak directly to millions of people about the progress that we re starting