How Does Pres. Biden Compare to Pres. Trump on Policy and Agenda?

   While I didn't read his tweets, I remember cringing at some of Pres. Trump's public statements, and cringing again when he either doubled down or contradicted them, later. The man's mouth was his greatest liability, because of his need to exaggerate, occasionally to the point of lying. Of course, all Presidents have lied to the American people, as in "you can keep your insurance," just to reference his immediate predecessor. In a strange way, his mouth was also his greatest strength, because he said what he meant, when it came to policies and his agenda. Many of his supposed "lies" ended up being true, after lengthy inquiries. He wasn't wrong about the "deep state" bureaucracy, and he was honest in his attempts to circumvent, or disable it, for the most part. I could spend an entire column looking at the political/bureaucratic plots against him in both 2016 and 2020, but suffice to say their success was limited. Democrats and bureaucrats are still worried that he will run in 2024, and actively trying to prevent that.

   It's worth mentioning that Trump ran for president as an outsider, and a disruptor. He made that clear from the beginning. He was going to upend the Republican establishment, and then the national political establishment. He ran as a "wake-up call" for America, and in that he succeeded. What is amazing is that with all of his negatives, including his big mouth, his bad press, his legal woes and impeachment, he had so much success in policy terms before COVID hit. The economy was at last providing wage increases for minorities and the lower wage brackets, there was the first real effort to stop the mass illegal immigration caravans from Central America, via the Remain in Mexico policy, and our NATO partners were starting to pay what they promised to, in support of the alliance. The press spun all of this differently, but time, and a new president, has exposed the truth of it.

   Beyond a doubt, Pres. Trump was divisive, mostly because of his style of speaking bluntly, and often carelessly. Again, while many of his supporters loved this, a significant minority of Republicans declared themselves "NeverTrumpers," opposing him at any cost. When he won the GOP primaries, they supported Hillary Clinton. When he won the presidency, many of them turned against the Republican party, without actually leaving. I mention these people because even though I disagree with them, and think what they did was foolish, I may still agree with them on some other issues. I don't have any "litmus test" about politics. Anyone who understands how legislating is supposed to work knows that there are coalitions around some issues that are bipartisan. That's why I agree with some Democrats, on some issues. The "NeverTrumpers" became darlings of the Democrats, but not for long. I still wonder how Rep. Cheney could vote for 90% of Pres. Trump's policies, but still accept Speaker Pelosi's appointment of her to the Jan. 6th Commission. Does she not remember being demonized as the daughter of the Devil by these same people, just a few years ago?

   That brings us to President Biden, who ran as a "return to normal" after Pres. Trump. While Pres. Trump's chaotic tenure was not unexpected, Pres. Biden's descent into chaos started off innocuously enough, but was signaled on his first day in office, when he killed the Keystone XL pipeline. He followed this with reversing every executive policy that Pres. Trump had ever passed, including the ones regarding the Southern border. He suspended drilling leases on federal lands, some of which provide vital revenue to states, as well as access to potential oil and natural gas reserves. All of the media cheered his moves, without thinking of the consequences.

   All was seemingly going well, as Pres. Biden got his first big piece of legislation passed in March. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 passed without a Republican vote, and it pushed $1.9 trillion into an already overstimulated economy. Again, this was hailed by most media as a great accomplishment of the new President, even as an Obama economic advisor warned of dire consequences. Inflation was just a bogeyman, a fairy tale we told to scare children, most Democrats said. Prices were higher because the economy was restarting after the pandemic shutdowns, and any inflation was "transitory," which means "short-lived." Almost a year later, everyone has changed their tune about that, including Pres. Biden.

   President Biden attempted to preach unity, in his inaugural address. Unfortunately, he fell victim to the same anti-Trump madness that surrounds the riotous invasion of the Capitol on January 6th. I'm as outraged as anyone by the actions of that mob, but I don't remember any such reaction when protesters mobbed the White House the year before. In fact, the real question about Jan. 6th should be why Speaker Pelosi didn't approve adequate security, after all the warnings they had, even from the President. The fact is that the Speaker rushed through a second impeachment that was so much more of a farce than the first one that Justice Roberts refused to participate. As an experienced politician, Pres. Biden should have seen that this was not a unifying policy issue, and stepped away from it. That didn't happen. In fact, he has continued to use Jan. 6th to push unrelated items, such as his partisan voting laws.

   The anti-Trump madness wasn't the only thing Pres. Biden fell victim to. The Democrats' far left wing has taken control of the party's agenda. When Bernie Sanders became a real threat to win the nomination, Sen. Clyburn made some kind of deal with the far left of the party to rally behind Biden in the South Carolina primary, and knock everyone but Sanders off the deck. With all of the others gone, the party had to rally behind Biden, because Sanders' open Socialism would get Trump re-elected. I'm not privy to how it happened, but there is no mistaking that Pres. Biden has been subservient to Sens. Sanders and Warren, in his cabinet and administrative nominations, as well as the policies and agenda that they advance. All of a sudden, "Working class" Capitalist Joe Biden became the new face of "Social Justice Progressives," and he didn't seem to notice.

   The most obvious disaster of these policies was Pres. Biden's reversal of the Remain in Mexico policy, which the courts have re-imposed, pending Mexico's agreement. Early in the year, he tried to claim it was a "seasonal surge." Now almost every month sets a new record, and he and his administration still refuse to call it a crisis. It turns out that his party's left wing encourages it, and supports "open borders." A few moderate Dems have spoken up, but the media ignore them, as well as the lack of COVID testing, and transporting these people all over the country.

   Speaking of COVID, Biden talked a pretty big game as a candidate, saying that Pres. Trump was responsible for every COVID death under his term in office. I remember, at the beginning of it, Pres. Trump said that the states have to set their own policies. He had been in office for a few years already, and had seen the limits of his power, through SCOTUS decisions, so he was right, of course. Nevertheless, he was pilloried in the media, and by candidate Biden. Now that Biden is President, and even though there are several vaccines available, the deaths keep piling up at the same rate as under Pres. Trump, he's in a fix. Does he take the same blame he assigned to Pres. Trump? Of course not.I almost can't believe he said "There is no federal solution." That is only half true. 

   When Pres. Trump was first confronted with COVID, he followed the advice of his experts, including Dr. Fauci. After seeing the way the government was screwing up the response, he came up with "operation warp speed," to get a vaccine. While that was a great success, he also advocated treatments for those who had contracted the disease, which was ignored by Fauci and the other medical bureaucrats on his staff. They also refused to factor in natural immunity by previously infected people into their recommendations. Of course, in the early days of the epidemic, this may have been understandable, except perhaps Dr. Fauci's continuing lies to the public, for political reasons. Pres. Biden has not fired Dr. Fauci, even after his lies about mask efficacy, and herd immunity are now public record. The only sensible thing he has done is reducing the recommended quarantine period, and not push lockdowns.

   If Pres. Biden had focused on treatments for people who are suffering from severe COVID symptoms, perhaps the case numbers wouldn't matter, and the death rate would be much lower. For some reason, the government has focused on "stopping the spread," or "ending COVID," as if that was a possibility. My favorite saying came early on, back in March or even February of 2020: "Flatten the curve." As a guy who knows a bit about math, and graphs, I remember thinking, and perhaps posting on fb, at the time, "If you flatten the curve, it will last longer."  I knew that locking down the country was not going to stop the disease, only delay it's spread. I honestly hoped that the "people in charge" would realize this, after the first two weeks, but I was wrong. Again, Pres. Trump was pushing to open back up long before most elected officials, but he didn't have the authority to order it, anyway.

   I can't count the hours that the media spent discussing Pres. Trump's mental state/health. For all of his apparent craziness, he did actually bow to reality, in his rhetoric, when it came to legislation. Here's where President Biden has totally gone off the rails, in comparison. He seems like a bad caricature of Pres. Trump, when he says the things he did in Georgia, or in his incredible press conference. Pres. Biden speaks and acts as if he has a huge majority of Congress and the American people on his side. He has neither. His insistence that his problem is an inability to communicate his message, and not the message itself is kind of an old trope from Democrats. I've heard them saying it for years, from both Pres. Obama and Hillary. While Obama passed Obamacare without a GOP vote, Hillary showed why he had to do that by blaming her healthcare debacle on "messaging," years earlier. The last Democrat who changed his policies to suit the electorate was Bill Clinton, who dropped health care reform, and instead accomplished welfare reform. Of course, his party has undone that achievement, in the years since.

   Pres. Biden has also embraced the progressive concept of "racial equity," instead of racial equality. This has led to several of his policies being shot down by the courts as unconstitutional. Along with Congressional Democrats, he has tried to nationalize voting laws, which is also unconstitutional, under the guise of correcting "voter suppression" against African Americans by states who are passing laws that clarify and codify election procedures after the fiasco of emergency measures in the 2020 elections. While the facts say otherwise, Pres. Biden has said that opponents of this legislation are "voting with Bull Connor, George Wallace, and Jefferson Davis," and later said that doesn't mean he's comparing them to those racists, as if that made any sense. His latest comment, which his VP seconded, was that the 2022 midterms will be "illegitimate" if these laws don't pass. They failed, 52-48. A politician with fifty years in public office should know better than to say such things, especially about two senators of his own party.

   It was often said that Pres. Trump made America a fool on the international stage, or that his insane rhetoric would start another war. Of course, American media always portrayed him as a puppet of Vladimir Putin, to support their Russian collusion hoax. This always struck me as funny, because Pres. Trump armed Ukraine, while Pres. Obama and Biden didn't. There was also the time that Pres. Trump launched 59 missiles into Syria, killing dozens of Russian "paramilitary" contractors on April 6th, 2017, while hosting Chinese President Xi at Mar a Lago, Florida, for dinner. I can only imagine how that went, as Pres. Trump received updates on the attack during dinner. If that made us a fool, I wonder how foolish "the world" thought the elimination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani was. As the leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, he had overseen terrorist operations around the world for decades. Almost all of our allies have been targeted by this man, or had operations of his happen in their nations. All of them were scared to pursue him, and Iran, for these acts of terrorism. Pres. Trump shocked the world, by using a standard military tactic to eliminate a global threat. 

   On the international stage, Pres. Biden likes to say that "America is back." What America is he talking about? The one that sent five Al Queda prisoners back to Afghanistan to recover a traitor, only to treat him like a hero? The one that left Iraq, and sat by idly as ISIS rose up in the power vacuum? The America who sent billions in cash to Iran for the privilege of negotiating their return to achieving a nuclear weapon? That was under Pres. Obama, but Pres. Biden has shown us where he wants to get back to with his shameful exit from Afghanistan. He still has no clue that what he did there has emboldened all of our global enemies. Worse, he shows no signs of adapting to these new challenges. He seems to have accepted Russia's potential invasion of Ukraine. He hasn't said anything substantive about China's aggression against Taiwan, or it's destruction of civil rights and democracy in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Ukraine had to push back against Biden's comment some thought invited a "minor incursion" by Putin. It looks as if his administration is full of people who think that America has "too much power and influence," and needs to be taken down a notch, globally. They think the Russians put Trump in office, but Hunter Biden's China ties mean nothing, while Pres. Biden covers for Dr. Fauci's denials of US funding of "gain of function" research at the Wuhan lab, and the virus' origin.

    This comparison is far from complete, but it's pretty clear that far from being a "return to normalcy,: Pres. Biden has created a whole new level of dysfunction in our politics and government. He has divided our nation far more than Pres. Trump, and put global security at greater risk than anything the "NeverTrumpers" imagined. Why is there no groundswell of "NeverBiden" Democrats who can clearly see the danger this president poses? Because the majority of pols support him, and the Democrats are willing to go to extremes to punish contrary views from within, as Sens. Manchin and Sinema can attest.