President Biden's First Prime Time Speech

For John, BLUF:  I watched the speech, live.  The President did better than I expected.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Biden sets vaccine goal that would allow Americans to gather by July 4

From The Boston Globe, by Associated Press Reporter Zeke Miller, 11 March 2021, 10:14 PM.

Here is the lede plus three:

One year after the nation was brought to a near-standstill by the coronavirus, President Joe Biden pledged in his first prime-time address Thursday night to make all adults eligible for vaccines by May 1 and raised the possibility of beginning to “mark our independence from this virus” by the Fourth of July. He offered Americans fresh hope and appealed anew for their help.

Speaking in the White House East Room, Biden honored the “collective suffering” of Americans over the past year in his 24-minute address and then offered them a vision for a return to a modicum of normalcy this summer.

“We are bound together by the loss and the pain of the days that have gone by,” he said. “We are also bound together by the hope and the possibilities in the days in front of us.”

He predicted Americans could safely gather at least in small groups for July Fourth to “make this Independence Day truly special.”

I went first to The Drudge Report for a link, but found that the New Matt Drudge had already moved on.  Then I remembered that at 6 o'clock this morning The Boston Globe was still headlining the speech.

As speeches go, this one was pretty good.  It covered all the bases and offered both admonitions and hope.  By and large it set the proper tone.

The one place it fell short, in my opinion, was that it didn't give even an inch of credit to President Biden's predecessory, President Trump.  I believe that if President Biden had acknowledged, just for a moment, that President Trump and his Operation Warp Speed had paved the way for the innoculations of 2021 it would have been part of the political healing the President has talked about.  It would have said "we are all of us fighting this, together."  It was a missed opportunity.  Does the Democratic side detest President Trump and those who voted for him so much that they could not grant him the crumbs of acknowledgement?

But, aside from that a good speech.

And here are some Fact Checking comments, from:

• The New York Times, and,
• CNN.

This is me, a Trump Voter, reaching out to President Biden.  Will he be reaching back?

Regards  —  Cliff