WASHINGTON — President Biden appeared on the late night show for the first time since taking office on Friday, denouncing partisanship in Congress and endorsing a song with rapper Megan Thee Stallion encouraging Americans to get the Covid vaccine.
“No joke,” he said on “The Tonight Show” with comedian Jimmy Fallon.
For Mr Biden, who appeared virtually in the taped interview, his third appearance on the show marked a break from criticism over its declining polls and a spike in inflation which accelerated last month to the highest pace in 40 years. The president took the opportunity to celebrate the passage of his bipartisan infrastructure package, emphasize the importance of voting rights and encourage Americans to act.
“The bottom line is that the way to avoid the virus is to take two injections and then get the booster shot,” Biden told Fallon. He added that if more people would listen to the song Mr. Fallon has made with the singer Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion, “It was a… Masked Christmas”, this would help to combat vaccine hesitation.
Mr Biden shared a link to the song on Twitter earlier on Friday with the message, “This is the season (to get a boost).”
“It’s really important,” Mr Biden said of the booster shots, pointing out that teens and young people were now eligible to be vaccinated. “We’re moving, we’re moving.”
Mr. Biden also took the opportunity to stand a small chance of the partisan division that has become the norm in Congress after Mr. Fallon said he saw Democrats and Republicans warmly socializing at the 44th Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday.
“I saw Republicans and Democrats in the crowd – everyone was laughing at jokes and listening to great music, and everyone seemed warm and nice and I’m going, this seems like it should be a lot easier to get along with everyone,” said Mr. fallon.
Biden then noted that one reason he was late for his taped interview was because he was at the funeral of former Senator Bob Dole, a former Republican presidential nominee who earlier in the day praised the president as a blunt leader willing by the aisle work.
“He asked me on his deathbed if I would deliver his eulogy,” Mr Biden said. “We’re friends. We don’t agree, but we’re friends. We used to have a lot of that relationship and it still exists.”
The president then said the extremist views of some members of the Republican Party had eroded some of that duality.
Mr. Biden was featured on Mr. Fallon’s show twice before, both in September 2016, towards the end of his time as vice president, and again in 2020, in an interview that took a much more serious tone during the proliferation of the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Biden, who as president often emphasizes in his speeches or interviews with mentions of “That’s no exaggeration” and “It’s no joke,” has shown a willingness to joke a little on late-night shows.
Mr. Biden told Mr. Fallon that his family was not used to having every meal prepared for them in the White House and that he reached an agreement with “the guys who run the kitchen” that the first family would make breakfast for themselves. to make.
“Do you make your own eggs?” asked Mr. Fallon.
“Well, I don’t — Jill does,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the first lady of the United States.
Mr Biden also predicted some of his upcoming goals while performing on the show. When asked what he hoped he would have around this time next year, he said he hoped he would celebrate his government getting the pandemic under control, even though the rise of the Delta variant this summer took into account with its declining approval ratings. He added that he was aiming to take more measures to combat climate change.
And Mr Biden said he hoped to pass legislation that would preserve voting rights, something he acknowledged at a DailyExpertNews town hall in October that hadn’t received his full attention as he tried to gather enough votes to fund his infrastructure and social spending. to get. packages.
Biden said Republican efforts to restrict voting rights in more than a dozen states were “literally un-American.”
Mr. Fallon playfully insulted Mr. Biden on his show last week, when the host played a clip of the president delivering the jobs report in a hoarse voice.
“There he is, President Groot,” Fallon told his audience, referring to the beloved alien tree from the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies.