Biden in review: Remembering the past four years
Joe Biden wasted no time in defining the central theme of his presidency. He may have been a poor communicator, but this much he could say: his opponents, MAGA Republicans, constituted a radical threat to American democracy.
Sandwiched between “Trump,” Acts 1 and 2, and overshadowed by his predecessor-turned-successor, Biden’s sole term in the White House felt more like a campaign ad against (and, inadvertently, for) MAGA than anything uniquely belonging to Biden. For every day Biden was in the news, Trump was right there beside him, often because Biden anathematized him ad nauseam.
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” the president roared in his “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech. Against the backdrop of a red-lit Independence Hall, the president declared, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic…. The Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country…. MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. They spread fear and lies — lies told for profit and power.” So on and so forth.
Less than two years prior, the irascible pol had pledged his “whole soul” to “bringing America together, uniting our people, and uniting our nation.”
“I will be a President for all Americans,” he vowed in his inaugural address. “I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.”
The media pretended to believe him. David Corn, the author of “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” dubbed the 46th president “Biden the Healer.”
But the shaman’s prescriptions — his swelling harbingers of unity — formed empty clouds over Washington.
A weaponized Department of Justice and censorship complex
The mendacity about singing Kum ba yah together faded faster than it took the new president to pronounce “truindenashendubbabapresser.” The American people were introduced to a formidable presence in the Biden White House: Merrick Garland and his baneful Department of Justice (DOJ). Blocked from the Supreme Court by Senator Mitch McConnell in 2016, Garland came roaring back with an axe to grind and an army of FBI agents at his disposal.
A growing public debate about gender identity in the classroom took center stage during the summer of 2021. In October, the Attorney General issued a letter identifying the first major victim of his “weaponized” political apparatus: parents who protested “woke” education.
“The Department [of Justice] takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland wrote. “In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”
It was a bad look for the ostensibly pro-unity administration. But the worst was yet to come.
Armed FBI agents arrived at a pro-life father’s home; Garland’s cronies prosecuted and arrested pro-life grandparents and a Holocaust survivor; they launched a federal investigation into the largest Protestant denomination in America; they targeted “Moms For Liberty,” comparing them to the KKK and Nazis; the FBI raided Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-A-Lago; and Garland tapped Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate the former president three days after he announced his 2024 campaign.
Moreover, the Biden regime devolved into a censorship thug, badgering social media companies to block unfavored speech. On a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed, “people from the Biden administration would call up our team and… scream at them and curse," pressuring them to “take down things that are true.” Last year, in a letter to Congress, Zuckerberg condemned the government coercion as “wrong.”
However, it did not require a smackdown from the penitent Facebook mogul to see behind the scenes at the Biden censorship complex. Long before Zuckerberg began making concessions to Trump, outlets, such as Convention of States, were already exposing Biden’s backhanded censorship tactics. In December 2023, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.” And in early 2024, Convention of States Co-Founder Michael Farris backed a lawsuit blasting a “coordinated campaign by high-level federal officials to suppress the expression of disfavored views on important public issues.”
And through it all, the insults never stopped. The president christened a Fox News reporter “a stupid son of a [expletive].” On MLK Day, he characterized Republicans as “demented.” During the 2024 presidential campaign, the media nearly suffered a hemorrhage when a comedian called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" at a Trump rally. Still, they had far less to say when Biden turned the insult against Trump’s voters: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” the sitting president claimed.
It all contributed to Biden’s reputation as a president who, while promising unity, sought to demonize, silence, and, in some cases, even arrest those who opposed him. Worse, his attacks weren’t aimed solely at “MAGA Republicans.” It seemed anyone questioning the Democrats’ slaphappy narrative about low inflation, a secure border, and Biden’s mental competence might end up on the president’s bad side.
Foreign Affairs
And while domestic “terrorists,” a.k.a. moms at school board meetings and abortion clinic protestors, may have faced the gritted-teeth wrath of America’s commander-in-chief, our foreign adversaries, including Hamas, Iran, and China, were more likely to encounter a doddering, irresolute dove.
On August 26, 2021, during Biden’s disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan, a devastating terrorist attack at Abbey Gate claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians. Despite earlier assurances from the White House, the U.S. abandoned as many as 14,000 legal permanent residents, plus billions worth of equipment. The debacle triggered widespread backlash against the president, with foreign policy experts labeling the withdrawal as "hasty," "chaotic," and entirely preventable.
“Future historians will ask how a global superpower like the United States seemed so unprepared for Afghanistan’s unraveling,” wrote Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe. “Here’s what they should know: Almost everyone who paid any attention to Afghanistan saw it coming—everyone, that is, except Biden and his insular circle of advisors.”
The Afghan crisis remains one of the darkest chapters in the Biden saga; unfortunately, his international woes had only begun. In the months and years that followed, Iran threatened the U.S., Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and Hamas terrorists slaughtered over a thousand Israelis on October 7, 2023, sparking a broader war in the Middle East.
Each new calamity appeared to test Biden’s resolve. Although supporters will point to his long-term support for Ukraine as a rare highlight of the administration, his early demurral about the consequences if Russian President Vladimir Putin restrained himself to a “minor incursion” may have signaled weakness to the Kremlin. Others faulted the American head of state for failing to define America’s objective in the war.
In the Middle East, Biden’s ambivalence appeared even more costly, resulting in a growing fissure between the U.S., which sought to keep Israel in tow, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted to end the war and eliminate Hamas on his terms. In May 2024, Biden threatened to withhold military aid if Israel entered Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in Gaza. Later that month, the U.S. refused to block a United Nations Security Council measure demanding Israel accept an unfavorable ceasefire for the Islamic religious month of Ramadan.
The war divided Biden's base, with a poll from May showing that 44% of registered Democrats disapproved of his handling of the conflict. But that was far from the only election-year trial he faced.
The 2024 Presidential Election and Kamala Harris
On June 27, less than two months before the Democratic National Convention, the nation was introduced to a president on the brink of apoplexy. Squaring off against Trump in the first 2024 presidential debate, the cadaverous Biden garbled his words, horrified his allies, and forced party leaders to call for him to drop out of the race. The liberal media establishment finally admitted what millions of Americans already knew: the 81-year-old president of the United States was in a state of decline.
But Biden refused to relinquish the reins. “As the formulaic ‘pass the torch’ drumbeat thumped on from lawmakers wanting him to quit the race, President Joe Biden maintained a brave face,” PBS reported. “I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” he boasted.
Less than two weeks later, he was kissing his dreams of serving a second term goodbye. Kamala Harris, his sidelined vice president, should replace him, he announced.
Harris — America's first female, Black American, and South Asian American vice president — was supposed to shatter the glass ceiling. Instead, she had been shuffled into a quiet corner where she wouldn’t disturb her boss.
“Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff – deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now,” CNN exposed in late 2021. “The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers – who spoke extensively to CNN – reveal a complex reality inside the White House.”
But maybe that’s not entirely fair. In the years leading up to the 2024 election, she was given at least one job for which she will be remembered.
The title of “border czar” clung to Harris, who clinched her party’s nomination in August, like an unshakable curse. Of all the administration’s failures, misfires, or successes she could have inherited, the Biden border crisis — the categorical immigration, border security, and humanitarian disaster on America’s southern border — was the worst.
Days into his presidency, Biden had reversed several Trump-era border security measures, triggering an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration. He quickly bequeathed the problem to Harris, who appeared incompetent to slow the flood. The following chart from America First Policy Institute illustrates the sharp increase in border crossings under the Democratic administration. Although exact figures may vary, experts estimate that U.S. officials encountered as many as 8.2 million illegal immigrants between January 2021 and June 2024.
When asked why she wasn’t doing more, as “border czar,” to tackle the crisis, Harris famously replied:
VP Harris: “We’ve been to the border.”
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 8, 2021
Holt: “YOU haven’t been to the border.”
VP Harris: “And I haven’t been to Europe.” pic.twitter.com/lEBhZzfA0u
Courtesy of her boss, this baggage was now Harris’s to bear. Even as she retconned her stance on immigration, blaming Trump for the border crisis, she found herself embroiled in yet another scandal: accusations of participating in a cover-up to conceal Biden’s true condition from the American people. Although the left-wing media turned out in force for Harris’s political glow-up, it was too little, too late. Biden faded into the background, condemned to obscurity. He spent election night at the White House, forced to watch from a distance as Harris drove the party into a train-wreck of an election.
In the end, the “unity” president, “Biden the Healer,” couldn’t even unite his party, let alone heal America. Even as his presidency closes, reports emerge of a growing rift between Harris and Biden over the latter’s remarks that maybe he could’ve beat Trump after all. We’ll never know. Henceforth, that “What if?” — What if he hadn’t relinquished the reins? What if he hadn’t selected Harris as his running mate? What if he had led a unified coalition? — will haunt his defenders and tantalize historians.
But, as we and future generations assess the 46th presidency, we ought to hold Joseph Robinette Biden to the standard he set for himself. He stated his aim from the outset: healing the soul of the nation.
Four years later, that work is woefully incomplete. In fact, we may have taken four steps back.
