Every single achievement Biden touted during his first address before Congress on Wednesday was made either at the expense of the Trump administration or in spite of it, which shows just how insecure Biden’s administration really is.
On the vaccine rollout, for example, Biden claimed credit for vaccinating 70% of America’s senior citizens without once mentioning that this process had already begun under his predecessor. Biden loves to make it seem as though the vaccine supply magically appeared in pharmacies nationwide when he became president. But by the time Biden entered the Oval Office, there were already 800 million doses being developed and distributed thanks to Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. Biden just piggy-backed off of the distribution plan that was already in place.
If anything, Biden’s administration made the vaccine rollout more difficult. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration ordered a temporary pause to the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine over concerns about very rare blood clotting. As a result, 75% of the public now distrusts the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It could take months for the federal government to convince people that this vaccine is safe again, and even then, many still won’t get it. We always knew we’d run into a vaccine demand wall, but Biden’s administration heightened the hesitancy many people were already feeling.
Another dishonest claim Biden made during his address was that he inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and turned it around. Had he been president during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, this might have been true. But he wasn’t. Trump was. And by the time Biden took the oath of office, unemployment rates had been cut in half, from 13.3% to 6.3%. The real GDP had bounced back in the third quarter of 2020 after an abysmal second quarter, and it continued to grow in the fourth quarter, which concluded just before Biden took office. In short, the worst of the economic crisis had passed before Biden was even elected president.
Biden’s biggest lie on Wednesday night was about the massive migration crisis at the southern border. Instead of admitting that his decision to roll back Trump-era immigration policies has made it impossible for border officials to get control of the migration surge, which began at least in part because Biden promised to make it easier for immigrants to stay in the United States once he became president, Biden pointed the finger at Trump.
“When I was vice president, I focused on providing the help needed to address these root causes of migration. It helped keep people in their own countries instead of being forced to leave. Our plan worked, but the last administration shut it down,” he said.
Whether President Barack Obama’s cash payments to Central America actually worked is questionable. But experts and voters now agree that simply cutting a check to the Northern Triangle isn’t going to fix the real problem. Migrants aren’t traveling to the U.S. because they have no other choice, but because Biden promised not to deport them. Biden alone is responsible for this crisis, and his attempts to pin it on Trump will backfire.
Biden is borrowing from Trump’s successes and blaming Trump for his own failures because it’s easier than admitting the truth, which is that Biden doesn’t have much to show for his first 100 days. He signed a flurry of executive orders that will just be overturned by the next president, and he pushed another coronavirus relief package through Congress, but the rest of his agenda remains at a standstill. He can’t even rally his entire party behind it!
But that’s probably Trump’s fault too.
