President Barack Obama appeared on the PBS NewsHour with Gwen Ifill from Elkhart, Indiana. He gave a speech earlier, sat down with Miss Ifill for the NewsHour, and at 8:00 p.m. PBS was to broadcast a Town Hall from Elkhart. “Questions for President Obama: A PBS NewsHour Special” isn’t that a totally precious title.

Watch this painful four minutes and then we’ll discuss.

Fiscal year 2015 deficit $438 Billion versus fiscal year 2016 projected deficit of $616 Billion is bad enough. Our bigger problem is the DEBT. The U.S. National Debt grew an unhealthy FIVE TRILLION dollars under President George W. Bush. Under President Barack H. Obama, in seven and one half years, the U.S. National Debt has grown an unsustainable NINE TRILLION dollars to an estimated 19.2 trillion dollars. I wonder if either Gwen Ifill or Barack Obama know the difference between the deficit and the debt.

Obama claims the unemployment rate was nearly twenty percent shortly after he took office and is now around four percent seven and one half years later. Dear Mr. Delusional President, when the percentage of those NOT in the labor force (not working or looking for employment) is at a 36 year high, then the unemployment rate cannot be four percent, unless the books are being cooked…..hmmmm? The U6 rate is about ten percent. The U6 figure includes the discouraged and underemployed worker.

Unfortunately, Miss Ifill cannot/will not ask follow up questions.

For those of us in flyover country, who do not live behind high fences with cooks and drivers, the struggle is real. College costs and health care costs are not just going up. They are going up exponentially. My own healthcare plan, which my husband and I have paid ourselves for fourteen years, has more than doubled in the last three years and is being cancelled July 31, 2016. Thank you Humana!

When Donald Trump says that America is in decline or when Hillary Clinton tells us how bad it is in America, it does resonate.

What Hillary just described does sound like a country in decline. A third world country.

Mr. President, Americans know that the “ground under their feet isn’t quite as solid” because the country is rudderless. From “shovel ready jobs”, to “You didn’t build that”, to U.S. Navy sailors on their knees before their Iranian captors, Americans know that we are leaderless.

Now, if Gwen Ifill and her fellow journalists would learn to ask a follow up question, maybe President Barack Obama would have to give real answers.