it took 5 years to build the Key Bridge in 1977 it's not clear how long reconstruction is going to take after the collapse President Biden promised to help rebuild it in just the hours after that disaster it's my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge and I expect the Congress to support my effort now of course President Biden speaking after uh that disaster but will the president have enough support in Congress who want to bring in a familia
r face back here to the desk this Easter Sunday Joey Garrison is the White House correspondent from USA Today Joey it's good to see you you know the Biden infrastructure deal you know came up with about $40 billion for infrastructure project it's estimated right now in some circles it's going to cost about $800 million to replace this Francis Scott keybridge but that's separate and aart from the infrastructure deal I imagine this came up a lot at the White House this week what are the prospects
of you know bipartisan agreement on this get this moving well I think the prospects are pretty good that there'll be a bipartisan uh agreement even in a very fractured Congress for something like this in past uh Bridge disasters I believe the one uh the bridge disaster Minnesota it took less than a week for there to be congressional action and I think that's you know we will see action uh the administration was able to allocate $60 million initially from the trans portation uh uh uh department b
ut of course it's going to take substantially more than that and as you said Biden is committed that the US Government Federal Government will cover the entire cost of the bridge and so uh Biden said he plans to visit Baltimore this week I think we're going to start learning more about what the plan is to get that funding approved but you know this seems to be one of those things that will happen in a presidency that's unexpected that comes out of left field nobody could predict that the you kno
w Francis Scott keybridge was going to get knocked down last week but it it does have a moment here that's going to be a test for this presidency in this White House no doubt this is when uh the American people look for uh look to the White House to see competence I mean and especially it's in an election year of course as well of course Maryland isn't a swing state it's reliably blue uh but nonetheless you know it puts the focus on the White House to get this done especially uh Transportation s
ecretary Budaj jedge who has been over uh in Baltimore and in Maryland uh for uh since This Disaster unfolded all right I want to switch gears here for a minute to the politics uh we want to put up the latest Fox News poll numbers only about 30% approved of the president's handling of immigration and a majority disapproved of his handling of the economy and inflation prices up about 20% sukki took since he took office now one of the things that people have been looking at as well too with Biden
is that since that State of the Union message his approval ratings have ticked up not a lot very slightly yeah but but they're on the incline which is what the White House wanted to see what do they need to do to keep moving in that direction right now because here in our own backyard you know we have this disaster that needs to be addressed is the president in the white house looking at this and building upon what they did two weeks ago in state of the union well I think in order to see his pol
l numbers uh climb even further they're going to need us continue to have momentum on the economy now there's been evidence that uh the perceptions of the economy from the American people after being so low for for so long have started to improve that's a good sign for Biden but as as we see here uh you know across the board on on inflation the economy and immigration uh three of those very important important big crucial issues he's he's pulling very dangerously low uh and I do think that you k
now across the board regardless putting all the polls together Biden is slightly behind Trump uh right now in the head-to-head race and then of course uh you have the the factor of Robert of Kennedy Jr and the other third party candidates that pose a problem uh for Biden what seems to be their take on Kennedy's candidacy and now this vice presidential candidate announcement are they looking at this as something that they don't want to pay any attention to or are they going to start to maybe lean
in on Kennedy a little bit Biden himself is not uh uh really acknowledge Kennedy as a candidate but the but the allies of the president have started to zero in on him and and and are taking it the campaign is taking it very seriously of course notably on St Patrick's Day you had uh the entire Kennedy Clan essentially there uh endorsing Biden with the notable absence of Robert F Kennedy Jr who was not there of course not uh he wouldn't have wanted to go but obviously the opponent here of Biden b
ut yeah I mean the campaign has to take this seriously he might not be a factor in terms of possibly winning this race but you get a couple percentage points here and there and some of these crucial kind of the six Battleground states that are going to decide this he could totally flip this thing but what's the chatter in the white house right now because you know when you look back at 2000 with Ralph nater obviously you know Bush Vore a lot of people out of the gate kind of dismissed Ralph nate
r but there was a general understanding that nater was going to pull for Al Gore back then because Democrats and nater did tend to align on a lot of the issues that's not necessarily clear with Robert of Kennedy J right uh you know I think that they want to delicately start putting out that they think you know that Robert F Kennedy has extreme views that I don't think people who support him realize I think that there's a feeling that he's polling so well obviously because of the polling well in
terms of favorability is because of that Kennedy name they don't think that people some some Democrats don't really think voters know who they're uh being asked about in these polls and that Kennedy name might not have the same poll generationally now that it maybe had decades ago not to bring a lot of people but there's still sort of a POS postive connotation with the Kennedy name Joey Garrison from USA Today always a pleasure to have you here we appreciate happy Easter to when we
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