President Joe Biden Visits Jimmy Kimmel Live 6/08/22 Transcript

Jimmy Kimmel: (00:00)
Our very special guest tonight is to aviator sunglasses, what Tom Cruise is to aviator sunglasses. I’m proud to say I voted for him dozens of times. He is the reason we all got a cavity search tonight, please welcome the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden.

[inaudible 00:00:18].

Joe Biden: (00:18)

The wonderful First Lady is here tonight [inaudible 00:01:14], how nice, how nice that the First Lady came along.

Joe Biden: (01:18)
That she did. She just made the commencement of speeches at the Los Angeles Community College.

Speaker 3: (01:23)
Yes.

Joe Biden: (01:23)
Oh, by the way, I’m Jill Biden’s husband, she’s right there.

Welcome. It’s wonderful to have you here.

Joe Biden: (01:31)
It’s good to be back Jimmy-

It’s good to-

Joe Biden: (01:31)
… I thought maybe you wanted me to just stay on Fox all the time.

They’re very concerned that I might not ask you serious questions, so I don’t want you-

Joe Biden: (01:40)
Oh, they really ask serious questions.

Yeah, right. I don’t want to upset them at all. Do you mind if I ask you some serious questions because this is, unfortunately-

Joe Biden: (01:50)
No, I never mind having a conversation with someone really smart.

Well, Guillermo, maybe you need to take over.

Joe Biden: (02:01)

We were here in September of 2019, and one of the things we talked about at length was gun violence. And you said that we need to do something about this gun violence, particularly when it comes to our schools. And here we are, a couple years later, we’re halfway through this year already, there have been what, 27 shootings at schools? But just to get into it, why haven’t we done anything about this?

Joe Biden: (02:25)
Well, I think a lot of it’s intimidation by the NRA. And look, this is not your father’s Republican Party, this is a MAGA party, it’s a very different Republican Party. And so you find people who are worried, I believe that if they vote for rational gun policy, they’re going to be primaried, and they’re going to lose in a hard right Republican primary.

Is that your take when you speak to these guys and women behind the scenes that they… Is there any honesty? Do they acknowledge that they would like to do something?

Joe Biden: (03:02)
Well, many of them do. I get in trouble for saying this, but I get on, we have very different views on a lot of things, but I’ve always had a straight relationship with the majority, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, he’s a guy that when he says something, he means it. I disagree with a lot of what he says, but he means it, there are a number of-

Like, when he said we can’t confirm a Supreme Court justice with a year left.

Joe Biden: (03:32)
That’s right.

And then said the opposite.

Joe Biden: (03:34)
Well, no, what he did… Look, he’s a leader of a party that’s moved very hard right, and so in order to get anything done, he has a different problem than he did early on before Trump became president.

It seems like maybe the party has moved hard right, but I don’t know that the people have moved hard right.

Joe Biden: (03:54)
They haven’t.

Because people overwhelmingly believe we should have serious background checks.

Joe Biden: (03:59)
That’s why-

They overwhelming [inaudible 00:04:05].

Joe Biden: (04:05)
You may remember, the last time we did something serious about guns was when I passed the Assault Opens Ban, I was the guy that sponsored that, got it passed, limiting a number of bullets that could be in a magazine, the whole background checks, a whole range of things. And we passed and violent crime and gun crime dropped off, but I could only get it pass for 10 years, it had to be reauthorized. And when the first Bush administration came along, they didn’t reauthorize it, we didn’t have the votes. And so what happened was all of a sudden it came back, and you could own assault weapons again.

Joe Biden: (04:40)
And guess what? Crime went up significantly three times. So there is a direct correlation between the kinds of weapons that can be had.

Joe Biden: (04:50)
I met with every single family member of all those kids who were killed, and the teachers killed down in Uvalde, Texas. And they stayed with me for almost four hours, over 200 of them, meaning family and extended family, and the stories they told and the pain you could see on their faces, it just made you…. It just, it leaves such a…

Shouldn’t we demand that every Senator in the United States sit with those families?

Joe Biden: (05:23)
I think we should make the demand. Here’s what has to happen, all of you folks and I hope… and I’m not being facetious when I say this, hope the Republicans here as well, you got to make sure that this becomes a voting issue. It’s got to be one of those issues where you decide your position on the issue, Senator or the candidate for House or Senate on what we’re going to do on with assault weapons, and how maybe it’ll have 300 rounds in a magazine, what you say on those things going to determine how I’m going to vote for you, it should be one of those issues.

You’re right, it is our fault that people in the House and Congress can take responsibility for it, but is our fault because we need to stop this. We need to do it.

Joe Biden: (06:15)
Well, we did last time, as I said, and it expired in 2004.

Can’t you issue an executive order? Trump passed those out like Halloween candies.

Joe Biden: (06:25)
Well, I did.

Isn’t that something that could happen?

Joe Biden: (06:28)
Well, I have issued executive orders within the power of the presidency to be able to deal with these… everything having to do with guns, gun ownership, whether or not you have to have a waiting, all the things are within my power, but what I don’t want to do, and I’m not being facetious, I don’t want to emulate Trump’s abuse of the constitution and constitutional authority. And so…

Joe Biden: (06:50)
And I mean that sincerely, because I often get asked, “Well, if the Republicans don’t play at square, why do you play at square?” Well guess what? If we do the same thing they do, our democracy will literally be in jeopardy.

Joe Biden: (07:04)
It’s not a joke.

I understand that argument, but also it’s like, you’re playing monopoly with somebody who won’t pass go and won’t follow any of the rules, and how do you ever make any progress if they’re not following the rules?

Joe Biden: (07:19)
We got to send them to jail. There’s that little box, “Directly to jail.”

The President is with us, Joseph Biden, we’ll be right back to talk more.

We’re back with President Biden, and the First Lady is with us too, here in Hollywood. Will-

Joe Biden: (07:36)
And my granddaughter.

And your granddaughter is here, the family is here.

Joe Biden: (07:39)
And Beyonce.

And Beyonce.

Joe Biden: (07:44)
It’s my daughter’s birthday.

Oh, how about that?

Joe Biden: (07:46)
Happy birthday baby.

Does somebody have to like remind you of all that stuff with all this craziness going on?

Joe Biden: (07:57)
No, no, no. My dad used to have an expression, “Family is the beginning, the middle and the end.”

I think a lot of Democrats are frustrated because we got out and voted, we won the House, the Senate, the White House, obviously, and still we have had made very little progress, as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to guns, obviously, reproductive rights, voting rights, climate change, the all these things. And in some ways we’ve moved backwards.

Joe Biden: (08:31)
Well, in climate change, we’ve actually made some real moves. One in seven of all the changes that have taken place in terms of solar, wind, and wind pumps, and I mean pumps and like, have occurred in the last 18 months; we’ve moved.

Joe Biden: (08:49)
And there’s an opportunity with the process we have dealing with energy to be able to gradually move more rapidly than we have been to alternatives.

Joe Biden: (08:58)
For example, electric vehicles, Jimmy, when I got elected… I pushed electric vehicles for the last, I don’t know, God knows how long. Well I had a conversation with the chairman of the board of General Motors, Mary Barra, and she was suing California, remember? Because your standard was too high.

Right.

Joe Biden: (09:19)
Well, guess what? We had a conversation, I got a call from her about three days, four days later, she dropped the suit and committed she’s going to go all electric in the entire General Motors by 2035, by 2030 [inaudible 00:09:32].

Joe Biden: (09:32)
Well, but it really is. And then Ford came along and did the same thing. So we’re on a path. And what is the successor to Chrysler is doing the same thing. We’re moving in directions that are being slow.

Joe Biden: (09:48)
Look, I won by… I got 81 million votes, more than anybody’s ever gotten, and thank you for those who you helped [inaudible 00:09:57]. But what’s happened is we still only ended up with 50 senators, which means that we have 50 presidents.

And two of them are kind of on iffy, I think, at best.

Joe Biden: (10:12)
Here’s the thing that’s interesting, one of the things that’s causing problems is that people think it’s the Democratic Party that’s so divided is the problem, and the problem is we have 48 out of 50 senators vote with me 95% of the time, more than any president has gotten that kind of support from their constituency. But we only have 50, and you can’t get even two, three, four Republicans to vote. Look, what’s happening now with regard to everything from the way they talk about this potential decision from the Supreme Court, I mean, it’s going to be… It’s awful.

What do we do about that? I mean, what do we do? And what do you say to Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema? What do you say to them when get them on the telephone?

Joe Biden: (10:54)
Well, what I say to them is, and by the way, they agree on a lot of these proposals relating to everything from choice all the way to-

I would hope so.

Joe Biden: (11:06)
Well, yeah, I know, but it’s not like they are there 80% of the time, the pace that they’re not there is Joe’s not there on a lot of the things having to do with the climate and the environment, because he comes from coal country and he has a different view, and Kyrsten is not always there in terms of the tax policies.

Joe Biden: (11:26)
Look, here’s where we are. We have the fastest growing economy in the world, the world, the world; we have 8.6 million new jobs just since I got in office, unemployment rate’s down to 3.6%, we’ve reduced the deficit last year by $320 billion, this year going to reduce it by $1.7 trillion, trillion dollars. And so we’re the strongest economy, and that’s allowed us at to stay on top of, and a little bit ahead of what’s happening around the world.

Joe Biden: (11:58)
Second thing is, look, inflation is the bane of our existence. Inflation is mostly in food, and in gasoline, at the pump.

That’s what kills you, because it’s a little billboard telling everyone how expensive everything is. If Donald Trump leaves one of those Sharpies over for you, could maybe change the price on that, you know?

Joe Biden: (12:22)
We could. But here’s the deal, you know, my dad used say every, every family has a little bit of breathing room. If you take and look at all the costs that a family has on a monthly basis, it also includes healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare, all those things. When I’m proposing we get, and I think we can get it done, I’m proposing that we in fact reduce the cost of those things.

Joe Biden: (12:48)
Why should anybody… And anybody of you in the audience know anybody who has to take insulin every month because they have [inaudible 00:12:56] one diabetes, type 2 diabetes? Well guess what? They’re charge as high as a thousand bucks a month in some places, average $647 a month on average.

Joe Biden: (13:07)
Well, if I pass what I want to get done, which we can do, and we can do it relatively easy, it’s not going to cost more than $35 a month. It cost these companies. No, no, I’m not-

Joe Biden: (13:20)
This is not, as our friends on Fox would say, socialism, this is very practical. It costs 10 bucks to make vial, so charging $35 gives them a significant profit.

Joe Biden: (13:33)
They don’t need… For example, our oil companies, oil companies, instead of everybody says, “Well, Biden, won’t let them drill.” They have 9,000 drilling sites that they’ve already owned that are there. They’re not not drilling and buying back their own stock.

It’s all screwed up. And that’s the thing. It’s-

Joe Biden: (13:53)
Well, it is screwed up, but we are only a few votes away from being able to straighten it out. We have to get the message across in a way that is understandable to people like the folks in my family, when we grew up, tell people just what the facts are.

Joe Biden: (14:09)
And the facts are that this isn’t anything about… this is about building the economy. When I ran, I said, “I want to build a new economy, no more trickle down, from the bottom up and in the middle out, because when the middle does well, everybody does well.” The wealthy do very, very well.

Joe Biden: (14:25)
The idea, there are 54 major corporations in America, made 40 billion last year and don’t pay a penny in taxes, not a penny. How many do you think the tax code is fair anywhere along the line here? No, I’m not being facetious now, I’m being deadly earnest. They don’t pay a penny. So if we had a minimum tax of 15% just on [inaudible 00:14:50] minimum 15, it doesn’t hurt them at all, they make a lot of money still, and we can raise a lot of money to make sure that childcare doesn’t cost you 1,400 bucks a month.

It all makes perfect sense. And the fact that this makes sense is why it doesn’t make sense, and why it seems so crazy, and that we have so many problems, and that maybe it’s just that Americans aren’t as knowledgeable as they should be. Or maybe there’s a Death Star pumping false information into our brain-

Joe Biden: (15:24)
Fox, right?

Yeah. Or maybe it’s always been this way. Here in LA a small fraction of people voted in the primary yesterday and then everybody wants to complain about everything, and it’s just enough already. And I think you need to start yelling at people is really what I think.

Joe Biden: (15:43)
Well, here’s what I think. Look, think about this. Look what impact the pandemic has had on people. It has had enormous impact, negative impact. Think of just your kids, how how many of them got to go to a prom? How many of them had a graduation that got celebrated? How much has changed in terms of the relationships between people and how they interact with one another? So much has changed.

Joe Biden: (16:11)
Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, talks about the need for significant mental health proposals, relating to people who are feeling, not knowing where they’re going, not knowing how to respond, not knowing how to act. And so there’s a lot we can do. But the bottom line is, I think, that we’ve seen such a radical shift in one party and the ability of that party to… That minority of… the MAGA folks-

Yeah, it’s like we’re living in two countries at once.

Joe Biden: (16:44)
Yeah, and-

It’s like, you can be, you can, sorry.

Joe Biden: (16:47)
But I’ve never been more optimistic in my life. So I tell you why.

Why are you so optimistic? It makes no sense.

Joe Biden: (16:52)
No, it does. Look at the kids. Look at the young people, best educated, least prejudice, most giving generation in American history. Turn on the television here, turn on, no, I’m serious.

There’s something to that, yeah.

Joe Biden: (17:09)
No, I’m serious. Turn on the TV, look at the ads. When’s the last time you saw biracial couples on TV? When’s the last time you saw the way… People are selling products, they do ads to sell products, and they sell products when they appeal to people; this generation is going to change everything. We just got to make sure we don’t give up.

Joe Biden: (17:29)
There’s an ability for us to do everything from in increase the access to education, healthcare. Look what we did in healthcare, all the talk about it. I was able to reduce people’s bills about 400 bucks a month.

It has changed people’s lives for the better, no question about that.

Joe Biden: (17:44)
So there’s a lot of major things we’ve done, but what we haven’t done is we haven’t been able to communicate it in a way that is… Make me say it another way.

Well, see, that’s kind of perfect. You haven’t been able to communicate it.

Joe Biden: (17:59)
But look how the press has changed. Look how the press has changed.

It has changed. Oh, listen, I get it.

Joe Biden: (18:04)
I know you get, you overstand it.

Yeah.

Joe Biden: (18:06)
You don’t just understand it, you overstand it. But here’s the deal. One of the things is that it’s very difficult now to have… With notable exceptions, even the really good reporters, they have to get the number of clicks on the nightly news. So instead of asking a question… Anyway, everything gets sensationalized in ways that… But I’m convinced we can get through this. We have to get through it. And one of the things, look-

I’m going to take a break and then we’ll talk a little bit more.

Joe Biden: (18:40)
I don’t blame you.

Sorry, we have some of those commercials. We have some biracial commercials we need to [inaudible 00:18:44]. We’ll be back with President Biden.

We are back with the president of the United States.

Just a process question, when you have sensitive documents that you need to flush down the toilet, do you do that? Is that done in your office toilet or is that done in the bathroom in the personal bathroom area?

Joe Biden: (19:04)
I call Trump. Everybody talks about sensitive documents and like, I don’t destroy anything, but one of the things that I spent more time with Xi Jinping than anybody, any other head of state. And I’d always be, when I traveled it was 17,000 miles, spent 78 hours with him they’d tell me, all told. And I’d have a consecutive interpreter, and he’d have one. And the difference between when I would do that and others would do it, I always handed in all my notes.

You got to hand in your notes-

Joe Biden: (19:40)
Hand in my notes.

We learn that in school, [inaudible 00:19:43] theoretically.

Roe v. Wade boy, these things just keep coming at you don’t they? You have not had an easy… What a terrible job you have. I’m glad you’re doing it, but boy, oh boy, does this seem like a bad gig.

Joe Biden: (19:59)
I think if the court overrules Roe V. Wade, and does what is draftick.

Well, we’ve heard they will.

Joe Biden: (20:06)
Well if that occurs, I think we have to legislate it. We have to make sure we pass legislation making it a law that is the federal government says, “This is how it works.”

Yet another situation where most of the country is on the same page, something like 64% of Americans do not want to see Roe V. Wade overturned.

Joe Biden: (20:28)
And it’s just going to be the beginning, by the way. There used to be a case called Connecticut v. Griswold.

Oh, I’m very familiar with it.

Joe Biden: (20:37)
But all kidding aside-

Is that from the National Lampoon Vacation movement?

Joe Biden: (20:41)
[inaudible 00:20:41]. But Connecticut v. Griswold said that you could not use contraception in the privacy, in your own bedroom, because in the constitution there was no right to privacy. And so they could outlaw it, and if you use contraception, it was against the law. You couldn’t purchase contraception. And there’s a whole range of things that are at stake here when we talk about eliminating Roe v. Wade and all-

Same sex marriage.

Joe Biden: (21:08)
It’s just ridiculous in my view. And I don’t think the country will stand for it, but I think what we’re going to have to do, there’s some executive orders I could employ, we believe, we’re looking at that right now, but I want to keep [inaudible 00:21:24].

Joe Biden: (21:27)
It’s clear that if in fact the decision comes down the way it does, and these states impose the limitations they’re talking about, it’s going to cause a mini revolution and they’re going to vote a lot of these and folks out of office.

Joe Biden: (21:40)
We got to keep it focused on, if they overrule Roe v. Wade and the state of California won’t do it, but other states say that you cannot do the following, and so as a law you can’t cross the border, you can’t… all the things that some states have, then you got to make sure that you vote, you got to vote and let people know exactly what the devil you think and change it.

Yeah, we have to vote for people who are fighting for this country and not just reacting to these horrible things, because we should have done something about gun violence a long time ago, the climate is something we could all look back at these days and go, “Oh my God, why didn’t we?”

Joe Biden: (22:20)
But we have made some progress. There 560,000-

Some, some.

Joe Biden: (22:24)
But it’s moving, it’s moving. My mother used to say out of everything bad something good will come if you look hard enough for it. So the reduction on the use of oil also increases the need to find alternatives. And that’s why I’m going over to the quote G7, the seven largest economies in the world, and meeting in Germany in a couple weeks.

Well, we’re looking hard for the good things, and we’re glad you’re looking hard for the good things too.

Joe Biden: (22:47)
We can do this. This is the United States America. We can [inaudible 00:22:51]-

President Biden everyone, thank you Mr. President. We’ll be back with Jack Johnson.

Hi, I’m Jimmy Kimmel, I hope you enjoyed that video, hit, “Subscribe,” and all your dreams will come true, assuming your dreams are to watch more YouTube videos.

President Joe Biden Visits Jimmy Kimmel Live 6/08/22 Transcript

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