在就职一周年前夕，美国总统拜登(Joe Biden)周三在白宫举行了一次正式新闻发布会，回答记者关于他对疫情、经济和立法议程的处理的问题，称该国是统一的，但没有达到统一的程度，并表示俄罗斯可能入侵乌克兰，这令人惊讶。

“这是充满挑战的一年，但也是取得巨大进步的许多年，”拜登在回答记者提问之前，首先回顾了他的政府取得的成功。

由于拜登面临着他在一个平分秋色的参议院所能完成的极限，最近几周无法在国会获得他标志性的社会支出计划或重大投票权改革，而且疫情仍在进行第二次投票，他在民调中的支持率创下了历史新低。答:1月12日昆尼皮亚克投票发现他的支持率为33%，比11月份下降了3个百分点。

当被问及数字下降表明美国人对他的工作表现不满意时，拜登直言不讳地回答说:“我不相信民调。”

总统吹捧过去一年的胜利，以启动新闻发布会，包括管理超过2亿剂新冠肺炎疫苗，并在许多州达到创纪录的低失业率。

“我们应该早点做更多的测试吗?是的，”拜登在开场白中说。“但我们现在做得更多。我们已经从一年前的零在家测试，到本月上市的3.75亿次测试。”

他说，新冠肺炎的底线是，这个国家“比我们过去和现在都更好”，并重申他的立场，不要回到封锁和学校关闭的状态。

“有些人可能会把现在发生的事情称为新常态。我称之为尚未完成的工作，”拜登充满信心地说。“我们正在走向这样一个时代，新冠肺炎不会扰乱我们的日常生活，新冠肺炎也不会成为一场危机，而是一个需要防范和威胁的东西。听着，我们还没到那里。我们会到达那里的。”

拜登面临的第一个问题是，他是否认为自己向美国公众过度夸大了他的政府在一年内能够取得的成就。

“听着，我没有夸下海口，”一位防御性的拜登回答道。“我的表现可能超出了任何人的预期。事实是，我们已经取得了巨大的进步。”

然后，他承认了一个弱点。

拜登说:“到目前为止，有一件事我还没有做到，那就是让我的共和党朋友参与到让这个国家变得更好的游戏中来。“我没想到会有如此坚定的努力来确保最重要的事情是拜登总统没有做任何事情。”

在回答美国广播公司新闻高级白宫记者玛丽·布鲁斯的问题时，拜登说，起初，尽管民主党人似乎没有通过他们的优先事项，但没有必要缩减他的议程，然后他承认他愿意分解政策项目，以便通过确实得到两党支持的条款。

拜登回答说:“我没有试图——我没有要求空中楼阁。“我要求的是美国人民已经要求了很久很久的实际东西。我认为我们可以完成它。”

拜登告诉布鲁斯，“我有信心我们能把大块的‘重建得更好’法案签署成为法律”，这似乎是第一次公开支持破坏这项里程碑式的立法。

后来，当被问及他是否会将民主党人提议的扩大社会安全网的计划分开时，拜登说，“对我来说，很明显，我们将不得不，很可能，将其分开。”

他补充说:“我不会自己去协商什么应该和不应该在其中，但我认为我们可以打破这个方案，现在尽可能多地获得，然后回来争取剩下的部分。大规模的一揽子计划包括从免费的全民预检到带薪的联邦家庭和医疗假期。

拜登说:“但我也认为，我们将能够获得重要的立法——如果我们现在没有得到所有的立法——来建设立法，以便我们能够获得约翰·刘易斯立法(约翰·刘易斯投票权促进法案)以及公平选举法案(为人民法案)的很大一部分。

在外交政策上，拜登首次公开表示，他认为俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京可能会入侵乌克兰，但警告称，他将“为此付出严重而昂贵的代价。”

然而，在关于乌克兰、北约和俄罗斯的几个回答中，拜登几乎承认北约在如何应对上并不一致，似乎为西方的统一应对划定了一条不至于全面入侵的红线——这可能会给普京留下空间，让他少派一些部队越境，但对乌克兰来说仍然非常不稳定。

虽然拜登表示，他仍然相信普京仍然不希望“任何全面战争”，但拜登表示，他相信普京将尽可能多地“考验”美国。

拜登结束讲话后不久，白宫新闻秘书珍·普萨基发表声明，试图澄清拜登的说法，即“小规模入侵”可能不会引起北约如此严厉的回应。

“拜登总统已经向俄罗斯总统明确表示:如果有任何俄罗斯军队越过乌克兰边境，那就是新的入侵，美国和我们的盟友将对此做出迅速、严厉和一致的回应。拜登总统也从长期的经验中知道，除了军事行动，俄罗斯人还有广泛的侵略战术，包括网络攻击和准军事战术。他今天申明，俄罗斯的这些侵略行为将得到果断、对等和一致的回应。”

谈到他的个人表现，拜登概述了他将在第二年任期内做的三件不同的事情。他说，他打算更多地离开华盛顿，与美国人面对面会面，欢迎“来自外部专家的更多建议”，寻求建设性的批评，并随着中期选举的临近，“深入参与这些非年度选举”。

后来被问及2024年的雄心时，拜登说副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯将是他的竞选伙伴。

他结束了近两个小时的新闻发布会，承认这是他第一次担任这个角色，而他已经在华盛顿呆了50多年，他需要改变他的方法。

“说到投票，我认为有一点已经很清楚了，那就是公众不希望我成为总统参议员。他们想让我当总统，让参议员当参议员。所以，如果我犯了——我肯定我犯了什么错误。如果我犯了一个错误，我习惯于通过谈判来完成事情，过去我在美国参议院相对成功，甚至担任副总统。我认为作为总统的角色是不同的，”他说。

Psaki在早些时候的一天，为总统建立了先发制人的防御，他告诉记者，“你不会在第一年就把所有事情都做好。”

“但我们感觉良好的是...她补充说:“这是在一个难以置信的困难环境中，与疫情、经济和大规模经济衰退作斗争，结果是，在我们之前的政府没有有效地处理许多这样的危机，已经取得了很大的进展。

“我们需要以此为基础。普萨基说:“工作没有完成，工作没有完成，我们当然也没有传达出来，所以我们的目标和我认为你明天会听到总统谈论的是如何在我们第一年奠定的基础上再接再厉。

白宫通讯主任凯特·贝丁菲尔德引用了1.9万亿美元的新冠肺炎救济法、美国救援计划法案和一项重大的两党基础设施一揽子计划，作为拜登将在周三MSNBC“晨间乔”节目中强调的两项成就。但是她也承认总统可以在其他问题上做得更多。

“他一直专注于驯服COVID和发展经济。他会第一个说我们没有达到我们需要的程度，”贝丁菲尔德说。

周三的会议标志着拜登第二次在白宫单独举行正式新闻发布会。第一次这样的新闻发布会于2021年3月25日举行。

从那以后，他举行了五次关于国外旅行的新闻发布会，三次是在白宫与其他外国领导人合作举行的，总共九次新闻发布会。根据加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的数据，虽然拜登经常回答媒体在其他活动中喊出的问题，但他的正式新闻发布会次数是自罗纳德·里根以来历届总统中最低的美国总统项目。

Biden defensive in rare solo news conference ahead of 1-year mark in office

On the eve of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, President Joe Biden held a formal news conference at the White House Wednesday, fielding reporter questions on his handling of the pandemic, the economy and his legislative agenda, characterizing the country as unified -- but not as much as it could be -- and raising eyebrows by saying Russia was likely to invade Ukraine.

"It's been a year of challenges, but it's also many years of enormous progress," Biden said to begin, ticking through his administration's successes before fielding questions from reporters.

With Biden facing the limits of what he can accomplish with an evenly-divided Senate, unable to get either his signature social spending package or major voting rights reform through Congress in recent weeks, and with the pandemic still raging well into its second, his approval rating in polls has hit an all-time low. A Jan. 12 Quinnipiacpollfound his approval rating to be 33%, a 3-point drop from November.

Questioned at one point on the falling numbers indicating Americans are unhappy with his job performance, Biden replied bluntly, "I don't believe the polls."

The president touted wins over the last year to kick off the news conference, including administering more than 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses and hitting record-low unemployment rates in many states.

"Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes," Biden said in his opening remarks. "But we're doing more now. We've gone from zero at-home tests a year ago to 375 million tests on the market just this month."

He said the bottom line on COVID-19 is the country is "in a better place than we've been and have been thus far" and reiterated his position not to go back to lockdowns and school closures.

"Some people may call what's happening now a new normal. I call it a job not yet finished," Biden said with confidence. "We're moving toward a time that COVID-19 won't disrupt our daily lives or COVID-19 won't be a crisis, but something to protect against and a threat. Look, we're not there yet. We will get there."

The first question to Biden was on whether he believes he overpromised to the American public what his administration could achieve in office one year in.

"Look, I didn't overpromise," a defensive Biden replied. "I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen. The fact of the matter is that we're in a situation where we have made enormous progress."

Then, he acknowledged a weakness.

"One thing I haven't been able to do so far, is get my Republican friends to get in the game of making things better in this country," Biden said. "I did not anticipate that there'd be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn't get anything done."

In an answer to ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce, Biden said, at first, there's no need to scale back his agenda despite the appearance that Democrats aren't getting their priorities through -- before conceding he'd be willing to break up policy items in order to pass provisions that do have bipartisan support.

"I'm not trying to -- I'm not asking for castles in the sky," Biden replied. "I'm asking for practical things the American people have been asking for for a long time, a long time. And I think we can get it done."

Biden told Bruce, "I'm confident we can get pieces -- big chunks of the Build Back Better law signed into law" -- appearing to back breaking up the landmark legislation publicly for the first time.

Asked later on to follow up on whether he would split up Democrats' proposed expansion to the social safety net, Biden said, "It's clear to me we're going to have to, probably, break it up."

"I'm not going to negotiate myself as to what should and shouldn't be in it, but I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, and come back and fight for the rest later," he added. The massive package includes items from free universal pre-K to paid federal family and medical leave.

"But I also think we will be able to get significant pieces of legislation -- if we don't get it all now -- to build to get it so that we get a big chunk of the John Lewis legislation (John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act) as well as the fair elections act (For the People Act)," Biden said.

On foreign policy, Biden said for the first publicly that he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely invade Ukraine -- but warned that he would "pay a serious and dear price for it."

However, in a couple of answers on Ukraine, NATO, and Russia, Biden all but admitted NATO is not united on how to respond and seemed to draw a red line short of an all-out invasion for a unified Western response -- potentially giving Putin space for something less than troops crossing the border, but still highly destabilizing for Ukraine.

While Biden said he still believed Putin still did not want "any full blown-war," Biden said he believes Putin will "test" the United States as significantly as he could.

Not long after Biden finished speaking, White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement attempting to clarify Biden's assertion that a "minor incursion" might not elicit such a severe NATO response.

"President Biden has been clear with the Russian President: If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies. President Biden also knows from long experience that the Russians have an extensive playbook of aggression short of military action, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics. And he affirmed today that those acts of Russian aggression will be met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response."

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White Hou...

Speaking to his personal performance, Biden outlined three things he would do differently in his second year in office. He said he intended to get out of Washington more often to meet with Americans face to face, welcome "more advice from outside experts" for constructive criticism and become "deeply involved in these off-year elections" as the midterms approach.

Questioned later on 2024 ambitions, Biden said Vice President Kamala Harris would be his running mate.

He closed the nearly two-hour press conference by acknowledging it's the first time he's been in this role, while he's been in Washington for more than five decades, and that he needs to change his approach.

"And one of the things that I do think that has been made clear to me speaking of polling, is the public doesn't want me to be the President Senator. They want me to be the President and let senators be senators. And so, if I've made -- I’ve made any mistakes, I'm sure. If I made a mistake, I'm used to negotiating to get things done, and I've been in the past relatively successful in the United States Senate, even as vice president. And I think that role as president is a different role," he said.

Psaki, one day earlier, set up a preemptive defense for the president, telling reporters, "You don't get everything done in the first year."

"But what we feel good about ... is that coming into an incredibly difficult circumstance, fighting a pandemic, an economic a massive economic downturn, as a result, an administration that was prior to us that did not effectively deal with a lot of these crises, that there's been a lot of progress made," she added.

"We need to build on that. The work is not done, the job is not done, and we are certainly not conveying it is, so our objective and I think what you'll hear the president talk about tomorrow is how to build on the foundation we laid in the first year, Psaki said.

White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield cited the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief law, the American Rescue Plan, and a major, bipartisan infrastructure package as two achievements Biden will highlight in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday. But she also acknowledged the president can do more on other issues.

"He has been laser-focused on taming COVID and growing the economy. He would be the first to say we're not where we need to be on those," Bedingfield said.

Wednesday's session marks just the second time Biden has held a solo formal press conference at the White House. The first such news conference was held March 25, 2021.

Since then, he held five news conferences on foreign trips, and three in partnership with other foreign leaders at the White House, for a total of nine news conferences. While Biden often answers questions shouted by the press at other events, his tally of formal news conferences is the lowest for any president since Ronald Reagan, according to data from University of California Santa Barbara'sAmerican Presidency Project.