First they laughed.
Then Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Chris Stewart answered the question on President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office.
Stewart’s immediate response to a viewer’s question during a joint online town hall Wednesday was a laugh and a wry smile.
“Stop me. I’m laughing,” he told Lee as they sat in the senator’s office.
Lee offered for Stewart to answer first but he deferred.
“If we were to rate the president’s first hundred days in office on the scale of doing what his progressive, left-leaning based wants, then I’m sure his score would be off the charts. Look, he’s making Barack Obama look like Ted Cruz,” Lee, R-Utah, said.
“This guy is moving so far to the left, it’s not even fair to everybody else who wants to occupy the space of the left’s greatest champion.”
Both Lee and Stewart have found little with Biden to agree on from coronavirus relief to voting reform, though they both have lauded his plan to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Lee said he’s finding a lot less to agree on than he expected to when Biden was elected.
“He ran, he sometimes presented himself to the American people as something of a centrist. He’s governing like anything but that,” Lee said.
Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, speaks during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 15, 2021.
Al Drago, Associated Press
Stewart, R-Utah, said Biden presented himself as “somewhat incompetent, kind of beyond his prime.” He said that persona pacified people and blinded them to the president’s “incredibly radical” policies in his first 100 days.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., gives Biden high marks, Stewart said, but he and Lee not so much.
“You’ve got to give him credit for being aggressive and being fast and being furious and being radical,” Stewart said.
“I’ll give him that,” Lee replied. “And on that count, I’ll give him 100%. It’s just not the kind of score I prefer.”