Live from Virginia Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed columnist and contributor Liz Peek to the show.
During the interview, Peek weighed in on Joe Biden’s recent visit to Pittsburgh, which she describes as an embarrassment because he didn’t engage with the press. She later added that only now he is coming out of his basement because the Democrats are realizing that the violence is no longer working in their favor.
Fredericks: Joining us now Liz Peek. She had a barn burner column on Fox the other day blasting Joe Biden and the Democrats over these riots and looting and everything. Liz, great to have you.
Peek: Good morning. I’m happy to join you.
Fredericks: You are pretty fired up in your column. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on it?
Peek: I think this entire Joe Biden campaign, as I wrote, is an insult to the American people. The idea that Joe Biden can campaign for the highest office in the land from his basement. Not engage with the press. Not take any questions from serious reporters. I mean honestly, what is their possible excuse? All the country is going back to work.
Going back to school and Joe Biden is the only one who is uniquely fragile and so vulnerable that he has to continue to hide out in his basement? Honestly, all Republicans have been sort of joking about this for the last four months. But the nation was expecting Joe Biden to emerge at some point and put everyone’s qualms about his mental fitness etc. to rest.
Well, he hasn’t done that. You just have to wonder, in campaign stop after campaign stop which is by the way about 10 miles from his home, he doesn’t take any questions. What’s that all about? I’m on his pool press email list and I get these daily updates about his campaign, I mean, honestly John, it is embarrassing. There is nothing to report because he never talks to the press. OK.
We may despise the media, we are the media you and I to some degree, but kind of doesn’t a candidate have to engage with them at some point and answer some questions? I find this bizarrely offensive. And particularly at a time right now when the country is really hurting and needs some leadership. He keeps talking about how Donald Trump isn’t providing any leadership. Guess what Joe? You don’t provide leadership from your basement. It’s not there. So I mean, honestly.
Fredericks: And even yesterday he went to Pittsburgh at a steel mill which isn’t that far from Wilmington. He talked for 20 minutes and it was all on a teleprompter. He took no questions and he left.
Peek: Yeah. By the way, the press pool report on this was hilarious. The airplane lands. Often times candidates engage with the press and have conversations with them. He looks at the press and goes, welcome to Pittsburgh. That’s it. Those are the only words you heard from him the entire day. I think we all know why this is taking place.
He really can’t hold onto a thread of conversation longer than about a minute without getting into trouble. Clearly there are signs of cognitive decline. The idea that the Democrats want to foist this guy off on the American public as a credible candidate for president is laughable and they know it.
The reason, by the way, that his fundraising increased after he picked Kamala Harris was people thought OK, he isn’t really going to be president. Kamala Harris will be president and we’ll give money to that campaign because at least she can put two sentences together in a row without embarrassing herself. John, when are people going to wake up to this?
Mind you, the media here is doing everything they can to cover it up. Just like they are not reporting on the riots. They are not reporting on Joe Biden’s frailties. And I find the whole thing so angry making. I don’t know what to do about it. If they are not going to report on murders in the streets they are certainly not going to report on Joe Biden being a complete flake.
Which kind of where he is. The idea might be, OK Americans have seen this guy for 47 years, we don’t really need to hear a lot more from him. Nothing is further from the truth. He’s been all over the place on so many issues. Legalization of marijuana. The Hyde Amendment. Law and order etc. We kind of want to know where Joe Biden stands right now, 2020, and we’re not going to find out.
Fredericks: Well, they are not going to let you find out.
Peek: Exactly.
Fredericks: That’s part of the problem. But if you really breakdown this Pittsburgh visit yesterday at the steel mill where he made his law and order speech or whatever speech he made yesterday, we have to point this out, Liz Peek, and you are spot on. He gets off the plane. This is his campaign plane. Now the way this works is, you run a campaign. You get off the campaign plane. The media is there. So you engage the media immediately because that’s how you get extra coverage right?
Peek: Right.
Fredericks: That’s how you get earned media. I want The Washington Post. I want The New York Times. I want the Pittsburgh Gazette. I want all the papers that are there. All the radio outlets in the Pittsburgh area. I want them all there. You engage them immediately after stepping off the plane on the tarmac. You give them five to 10 minutes. But you give them something and have a little dialogue. Right?
Peek: Yes. That’s customary.
Fredericks: Well, and it’s the way the campaign wants to get earned media. That’s media without advertising. He doesn’t do that. He says welcome to Pittsburgh. Leaves. Walks onto the platform. Makes his speech. His speech was what? 18 minutes.
Peek: All on a teleprompter.
Fredericks: All on a teleprompter. 18 minutes. Takes no questions. None! And then gets back into his plane and goes back to the basement. Why did he go to Pittsburgh? (Peek laughs) Why not just do the same thing from your basement?
Peek: Because he’s getting guess what? Democrats are waking up to the fact that his polls are shrinking, and particularly in the critical battleground states now, he is effectively tied in most of those with Donald trump having been up several points earlier in the summer. They know it’s not working.
They know Americans are unhappy about the violence in our cities. And by the way, it’s not one or two cities it’s like 10 now that have recurring riots and mayhem in the streets. A total lack of lawfulness. And Americans are beginning to pin that on the Democrats in charge of those cities. And by the way, they should. This is not just because you have a Democrat mayor and so the party affiliation is somewhere evident in the city hall.
These are city Democrat policies that have been put in place in New York City and Washington, D.C., and Chicago and elsewhere that basically benefit the criminals. That is what’s happened. In New York City which is where I live some of the time because I’m not there now thankfully.
They have now basically now changed what crimes you can be locked up for and they’ve taken a lot of violent crimes off that list. So you have people burglarizing houses and assaulting people and they are booked and they are out in hours. If criminals know they aren’t going to have any penalty for misbehavior, guess what? They go out and do it again. And that’s what you see in New York over and over again.
It is appalling to me. And how stupid that no one is willing to stand up and say OK. This isn’t working. Lets change it because our cities John are going to take a massive hit. Not just New York. Not just Chicago. All of these cities are going to suffer major reputational degradation because people, for example, tourists looking at where they might go for a vacation, they are going to say New York City? No.
Because it’s not safe. When you have a woman being raped in the middle of the day on a subway platform or another one who was stabbed at an ATM in broad daylight. This begins to bring back the 1970s of bad times in New York. And boy I’ll tell you what, it clobbered the city’s economy, and that’s what’s going to happen again. And it’s not just New York.
Listen to the full interview here:
