Biden's frantic weekend saves infrastructure deal but leaves him on thinner political ice

That Joe Biden's cherished bipartisan infrastructure plan was nearly destroyed by a few of his own ill-chosen words highlights both the fragility of the deal and his own hopes for a productive domestic presidency.

Biden's extraordinary weekend effort to walk back his own remark on Thursday, interpreted as a threat to veto the bill if it did not arrive at his desk alongside a multi-trillion dollar Democratic spending plan, appears, for now, to have succeeded. Republican senators publicly accepted that his comment linking the two bills -- "If this is the only thing that comes to me, I'm not signing it" -- was a flub. But the President still gave other GOP opponents an opening to portray the two measures as a deceptive two-step.