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President in new interview agrees with Republican senator Tim Scott
Biden acknowledges black Americans lag in terms of opportunity
We no longer fear the tweet: Biden brings US back to world stage

2.25pm BST
More on Joe Biden’s wide ranging interview with NBC. He also touched on the “ongoing problems” at the southern border. Biden lay blame with his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Biden described the on going issues as a “powerful mess”:
In an exclusive interview airing Friday with TODAY show co-anchor Craig Melvin, Biden said his administration inherited “one god-awful mess at the border” from former President Donald Trump. He said it’s the result of “the failure to have a real transition — cooperation from the last administration, like every other administration has done.”
After the November election, Biden said that he dispatched his transition team to meet with the officials leading the major departments across the government.
Biden declined to call the border situation a crisis. He also acknowledged that his administration has struggled to reunite the children and families who had been separated under Trump policies.
“We don’t know yet where those kids are,” he said. “We’re trying like hell to figure out what happened. What happened to that child when he got separated? Where’d they go? Where are they?”
2.15pm BST
Former vice-president Mike Pence has begun to reenter the public sphere. On Thursday Pence delivered a speech in South Carolina (an early primary state in presidential elections).
Pence, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, touted some of the policy victories of Donald Trump’s administration. But the former vice president to Trump made no mention to the rift he has had with the former president in the final days of that administration. He also did not mention the 6 January mob riot incited by the president.
“We’ve got to guard our values ... by offering a positive agenda to the American people, grounded in our highest ideals,” Pence told an audience of several hundred at a Columbia dinner sponsored by a conservative Christian nonprofit that lobbies for what it considers to be “biblical values,” such as heterosexual marriage. “Now, over the coming months, I’ll have more to say about all of that.”
The choice of South Carolina for Pence’s post-administration debut has definite political overtones, helping him develop exposure for a potential 2024 presidential bid. The state holds the first presidential primaries in the South, and candidates of both major parties typically spend more than a year in the state ahead of those votes, introducing themselves and trying to secure support. Continue reading...