The White House recently hosted a panel of sorts titled “Joe Biden Answers Burning Questions of Our Young People.” Put on by the progressive media outlet NowThis, six different individuals were given a platform to ask the president about his stance on their pet issues.

The first interviewer was Natalie Barden, whose brother was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. As a result of this terrible loss, she has been a passionate activist for gun control ever since. She is interested in the banning of AR-15s. This attack on the Second Amendment was a savvy warmup for Biden. He pulled out his favorite but idiotic trope about “deer wearing Kevlar,” and it only got more painful from there.

The second interviewer was Joshika Kumaran, whose topic was economic instability, i.e., student debt forgiveness. This gave Biden an opportunity to talk about his debt forgiveness fiat. That income redistribution may alleviate the short-term pain of paying back loans, but the economic drain on taxpayers is going to be lasting and devastating. It also gives further incentives for schools to raise tuition in the future. If taxpayers are footing the bill, why not? As for economic instability, Biden failed to address the cause of America’s financial instability — namely: inflation, recession, reckless spending, and failing to ensure supply chains aren’t vulnerable.

The third interviewer was Dylan Mulvaney, the TikTok star and “transgender” activist who asked the president what he was going to do to help “trans” kids in states that don’t allow mutilation surgeries for minors. Biden made his position very clear. He thinks that protecting minors from making these irreversible decisions is immoral and just plain wrong. “I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that,” he declared. “As a moral question and as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong.”

As political consultant Noah Pollak points out: “It’s two weeks before the midterms and Biden is doing interviews [with] transgender activists about the need to surgically sterilize kids. I think the progressives running the [White House] are actively trying to piss off 80 percent of the country. Never seen anything like it.”

The fourth interviewer was Dr. Danielle Mathison, an OB-GYN who is concerned about abortion. Her main line of questioning revolved around what the president could do to help women with access to abortion. She also perpetuated the lie that doctors can’t perform medical procedures on the mother when her life is in danger. There is not a pro-lifer out there who would have qualms about a doctor intervening to save the mother in life-threatening medical situations like an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage.

The Fifth interviewer was John Adrian “JJ” Velazquez. He is fighting for a change in incarceration practices. His story is that of an innocent man who was misidentified and yet was charged and spent 24 years in prison. Prison arguably makes people worse, not better. It’s not designed for reform. This was the only portion of the panel that was interesting — not because of Biden’s responses, but because of Velazquez’s eloquence. Velazquez is not, like raving Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, in favor of mass release; rather, he wants to fix the incarceration system so that it’s more reform-focused, not just punishment-focused. He had many interesting ideas and a different perspective gained from his time behind bars. The only thing that was a shame about this particular exchange is it teed up the president to talk about releasing those in prison for simple possession of weed. This particular talking point is largely acknowledged as a red herring. Many criminals getting convicted on simple possession are pleading down from much stronger offenses.

The sixth interviewer, Mari Copeny, from Flint, Michigan, has been an activist for clean drinking water since she was eight years old. At age 15, she was the youngest of the group. Her topic was environmentalism, and her segment was the hardest to get through. Everyone was tired, the other panelists had glazed-over eyes, and one was even struggling to keep her eyes open. This was mainly because Biden was giving long-winded and disjointed answers to questions Copeny didn’t actually ask. Our commander-in-chief spent his time justifying his enormous infrastructure bill. Then somehow it turned into talking about electrical wires and power plants. This somehow turned into an opportunity to brag that wind and solar energy are a lot cheaper now than coal, gas, and oil. Gas and oil are at an artificially inflated price due to Biden’s insistence on not drilling. And claiming that wind and solar are cheaper is deceiving because they are subsidized by the government.

This was a very safe interview for President Biden. These young people represent the various platforms of the Democrat Party. All they had to do was nod and smile. In spite of this friendly audience, Biden was rambling, hard to understand, and gaffing all over the place.

All of these issues (except perhaps incarceration) have a common theme: They are leftist elite priorities and not kitchen-table issues. Even a New York Times/ Siena poll clearly indicates that the economy and inflation are of more concern than climate change and gun control. But according to Biden, these issues are of such importance that “if we don’t lead in every one of the areas, every one of ‘em, we aren’t going to be what the world expects of us.” On the contrary, most of these are precisely the platforms that will lead our country straight to ruin if they haven’t already done so.