Biden: I Don’t Understand Today’s Republican Party

The president expressed bafflement at GOP attacks on Liz Cheney as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged “100%” opposition to the White House.

President Joe Biden, who predicted throughout his campaign that he would be able to work with a post-Donald Trump Republican Party, admitted Wednesday that he was surprised by the former president’s ongoing influence.  Still, Biden reiterated his desire to work with Republicans on an infrastructure package and even insisted he could work with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell mere hours after McConnell told a crowd in Kentucky he was “100%” focused on stopping the still-new Democratic administration. Biden’s comments highlight the administration’s struggle to attract widespread GOP legislative support for his signature proposals, even as many of those proposals draw significant support from rank-and-file Republican voters in public opinion surveys. Throughout the presidential race, Biden said his lengthy tenure in Congress made him well-suited to win GOP support for liberal ideas ― a proposition other Democratic candidates suggested was naive.