Biden mentions deploying National Guard to ease driver shortage woes, White House Officials say otherwise

President Joe Biden says that he is considering deploying the National Guard to help drive trucks and ease recent supply chain woes, but White House Officials say it isn’t true. 

President Biden spoke at CNN’s town hall in Baltimore, Maryland on Thursday evening, October 21st. During the meeting, moderator Anderson Cooper asked the President if he was in a position to call up the National Guard to help drive trucks and ease the supply chain woes, to which Mr. President responded: “Yes, absolutely, positively. I will do that….  if we can’t move — increase the number of truckers, which we are in a process of doing.”

When pressed about a timetable for potentially deploying the National Guard, Biden responded: “First of all, I want to get the ports up and running and get the railroads and the railheads and the trucks in port ready to move because I’ve gotten Walmart and others to say we’re going to move stuff off of the port into our warehouses.”

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki gave a more vague statement regarding the same question about calling on the National Guard to help the supply chain crisis:  “I’m not here to take options off the table.”

However, shortly after the meeting, a White House official reportedly told CNN that the administration is not currently considering deploying the National Guard, despite what Biden said. 

“Requesting the use of the National Guard at the state level is under the purview of governors and we are not actively pursuing the use of the National Guard on a federal level,” the official said.

Although President Biden has instructed the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to move to 24/7 operations, the ports are still unable to work these constant hours due to lack of truck drivers to move the cargo.