Reflective Executives: Trump and Biden Mirror Each Other
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency was the hottest topic of 2016 and only became hotter as he decimated his Republican opponents on his way to the GOP nomination. We posit that there were two different Trumps on the ballot. There was the Trump that stood on stage after stage and spoke candidly (and occasionally honestly), attacked his opponents ruthlessly, and played the politics game well outside of the lines within which other politicians typically operate. And then there was the Trump that the media told you about. An honest and unbiased comparison of what the media said we were getting in a President Donald Trump and what we actually got during his presidency barely lined up. But the 2016 projections about Trump largely did come true when Biden took office.
The aim of this article is to lay out the case that the version of Biden that has served in the White House since 2021 differs little from the 2016 version of Trump that the media told us we were going to get — which is also different than what we actually got during the Trump presidency from 2017 through 2020. This article is not about who is better and who is worse. This is an analysis of the portrayals versus realities. If you hate Trump and voted for Biden, be warned that this might make you squirm a bit — you may have vote for the guy that you hate.
Part One: Examining Predictions
Liberal fears were documented as potential warning signs that American democracy is at risk under Trump’s presidency (this was published on November 23, 2016, only two weeks after Trump was elected) in the article 10 Ways to Tell if Your President Is a Dictator:
1. Systematic efforts to intimidate the media.
2. Building an official pro-Trump media network
3. Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or the domestic security agencies
4. Using government surveillance against domestic political opponents
5. Using state power to reward corporate backers and punish opponents
6. Stacking the Supreme Court
7. Enforcing the law for only one side
8. Really rigging the system
9. Fearmongering
10. Demonizing the opposition
The author of this list points out that these are the tactics of authoritarian leaders, such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or Vladimir Putin of Russia, “to cement their own authority over time by initiating a vicious cycle of social hostility.” The author goes on to say, “When groups within a society are already somewhat suspicious of each other, extremists can trigger a spiral of increasing hostility by attacking the perceived internal enemy in the hope of provoking a harsh reaction.” Before proceeding, we cannot resist pointing out the irony in the author listing “fearmongering” among the list, since that is literally what he was doing by generating this list.
In the first part of this article, we take a look not only at how Trump performed relative to these ten warning signs, but also how President Biden has done relative to the same issues/concerns during his first term.
Media Intimidation
The relationship between Trump and the media during his political endeavors has been interesting. During the majority of his initial campaign, the media treated him as nothing more than a punchline. Really, it was not until late into the night of the election that much of the media had the realization that he was actually a contender. He was the subject of a lot of attacks and exposés that attempted to discredit him. One attack that the media jumped on was the idea that Trump colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. The Russia collusion story proved to be a hoax and an investigation revealed that the FBI “willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia.” Trump popularized the phrase “Fake News” in response to the media’s coverage of his candidacy and the misinformation that they propagated. While there was definitely an element of intimidation in the Trump-media relationship, it was the media that tended to be the aggressor, and it was Trump who was forced to defend himself. He defended himself in a very Trump style, which further alienated him from the media and further endeared him to those who mistrust the media. Trump did less to intimidate and did more to just sidestep the media. He took away their microphone by reaching the public through social media and exploiting those platforms to keep the spotlight on himself.
As for Biden’s relationship with the media, it has been a happy marriage until recently. Despite his countless public gaffes, bizarre expressions, inappropriate touching of women or girls, and his on-stage wanderings, the media has dutifully run cover for Biden throughout his vice-presidency, his campaigns, and his presidency. Only very recently has the worm started to turn, as the media have apparently been given permission to seize on concerns about his cognitive condition. While they still seem to be pretty cozy, the media-Biden relationship may be going in a new direction as speculation increases that the Democratic Party is looking for an opportunity to replace him on the ballot for the upcoming presidential election. Biden has remained rather reclusive during his 2020 presidential campaign and during his presidency. His rare media appearances are controlled and heavily edited.
Trump and Biden both took different approaches to dealing with the media and the outcome was more favorable for Biden, but there is nothing discerning about their ethics or morals as they pertain to the media.
Pro-Trump Media Network
Indeed, a couple of so-called Pro-Trump “news media” network emerged in the form of Newsmax and OANN (One America News Network). The bad news for Trump is that nobody watches either. Not really, anyway. Neither have capture a meaningful segment of the viewership.
Meanwhile, almost every other media outlet is Pro-Biden—at least until they recently decided that maybe, just maybe, he might be a little too ancient and senile to do the job. Perhaps we should just say they are pro-whomever-the-Democratic-Party-decides-is-running-against-Trump. The only real outlier still appears to be Fox News, which is not exactly pro-Trump, but more of pro-whomever-the-Republi-blah-blah-blah. They are all shameless, biased, corrupt, and dishonest.
[Public Service Announcement: Get connected with independent media!]
Now, if the prediction was that there would be a Pro-Trump social media platform, then we would have to give credit where credit is due. Social media is the real story of the past two presidential terms. Trump was indeed involved in creating Truth Social, a pro-Trump social media app that nobody really uses simply because it is, well, a pro-Trump social media app. Truth Social has about 2 million users compared with Twitter’s 450 million monthly users and Facebook’s 2.9 billion users. You are likely to find the political discourse on Truth Social to be as much of an echo chamber as you might find at the Country Club in Martha’s Vineyard.
The big social media shake up of the past two presidential terms came when Elon Musk bought social media platform Twitter (and bizarrely renamed it “X” while still referring to it as Twitter). Twitter famously banned President Trump in the pre-Musk days. Upon taking control of Twitter, Musk immediately installed pro-free speech policies and the liberal world melted down. Apparently, many liberals are okay with free speech as long as it is speech that they agree with.
And after Biden took the White House, how did his administration approach social media? Well, they “persuaded” social media companies to censor Americans. After all, the government would not be able to get away with directly censoring Americans on their own. But there is nothing like threatening a company’s existence to get them motivated to do your bidding. And that is what the authoritarian Biden administration has done. That is coercion. Biden did not start his own social media platform like Trump did, he just strong-armed existing platforms to act as an extension of his authoritarian administration.
The Biden administration has set a new standard for coercing private companies to censor Americans. Meanwhile, by kicking him off of their platform, Twitter made Trump the poster-child of the censored. Trump got censored, Biden promoted censorship.
Politicizing Government Agencies
During his tenure Trump cut employment at the Departments of Labor, State, Education, Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, and Justice as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. He expanded employment for the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs Departments. That is pretty much a wash in terms of strengthening/weakening the agencies. There may have been some politicizing in those moves, but it was probably more of prioritizing than anything.
Trump did pull the post office into the political discussion because of his claims of mail-in voter fraud. But nothing really came of it other than banter.
Much more prominently, Trump has brought the U.S. Border Patrol into the political spotlight. But he does not get all of the credit. A lot of elected officials have spoken out from border states that have been dealing with floods of illegal migrants. And the border remains a political issue, since Biden’s policy has failed to curb the massive volumes of border crossers. Biden has also dragged the Border Patrol into the legislative spotlight. His administration helped craft a bill to strengthen (sort of) border security, but the bill was loaded with billions of dollars for the war in Ukraine.
Biden, just days into his presidency, asked over 50 U.S. attorneys in the Department of Justice to resign — attorneys approved by the Senate and by bipartisan votes — because they were appointed by Trump. Also early in his presidency, Biden reinstituted an Obama policy that was thrown out by a Trump Attorney General that permits the DOJ to settle litigation in such a manner that payments could be directed to third-party organizations rather than to the U.S. Treasury. Biden also exploited the DOJ to enact new gun-control measures that many conservatives view as “radical.” Biden’s DOJ also targeted some of Trump’s allies, including lawyers who investigated the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine.
Of course, it is pretty well known that President Trump faces a number of legal issues. He is currently in court, representing the first time a former president has gone on criminal trial. Trump has a history of facing legal allegations through his businesses (and some of the pre-politics allegations are pretty shady), but nothing compares to the charges he is enduring now. Some may be legitimate, but some of the charges wreak of political shenanigans.
Biden gets a gold star for politicizing government agencies. His moves were just a little stronger than Trump’s. But if you assumed they were in a tie in this department and you were looking for a tiebreaker, consider this — which presidential administration sent federal agents to the home of a man at the moment he was testifying in a Congressional Hearing on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government”? That would be Biden’s administration and the victim of this harassment was journalist Matt Taibbi, who helped break the Twitter Files story.
Once again, it is tough to say one guy was better or worse than the other when it comes to politicizing government agencies. Besides, as the Christian Science Monitor pointed out in 2013, politicizing government agencies is “a bipartisan tradition.” Who are Trump and Biden to break from such a long-standing tradition?!
Domestic Surveillance of Political Opponents
Let’s face it, the government has the authority to surveil anyone — an authority that was further cemented when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was recently reauthorized. It is not worth the attempt to pin this on either Trump or Biden. This is just another symptom of our broken political system.
Use of State Power to Reward Backers and Punish Opponents
Does every president use the power of the presidency to reward their backers? Of course they do. That includes Trump. He placed several donors in leadership positions of different government organizations. He also pardoned or commuted sentences of some of his convicted team members.
Did Trump also punish opponents? He did repeatedly make a promise to do just that while campaigning. However, he failed to follow through. He began referring to his opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, by the moniker “Crooked Hilary” in reference to the various scandals to which she was directly connected (most notably the 2012 attack of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya and her storage of classified documents on an unsecure private server). Trump’s promise to put her in jail prompted supporters to chant “lock her up!” at many of his campaign events. Shortly after winning the election, he confirmed that he would not pursue prosecution of Ms. Clinton and that “It’s just not something I feel very strongly about,” despite it being a hallmark of his campaign for months. Trump supporters should have started paying closer attention to how well the man keeps promises at that point.
What about Biden, who heroically came out of retirement to help make sure Trump would not see a second term in office? A few months ago, Biden’s campaign finance team offered special privileges to donors who raise $2.5 million, including: attendance events with the president and VP, participation in online meetings with campaign staff, admission to meetings with the campaign’s finance committee, a luncheon with campaign and Democratic National Committee leadership, and other perks. Like with Trump’s quid pro quo with his donors, this is no surprise.
Did Biden ever punish opponents? Recall the Internal Revenue Service sent an agent to the home of journalist Matt Taibbi at the moment that he was testifying to Congress about the weaponization of the federal government. The Biden administration continues to deny former Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., who left the party to run as an independent candidate, the Secret Service protection that has been granted to all other major candidates. Biden’s administration sued the State of Texas over access to the border so that it could remove physical barriers that deterred illegal border crossings. It is unclear how much the current administration is involved in inundating Trump with lawsuits amidst his campaign against Biden, but there are an awful lot of lawsuits! He would be doing a pretty bad job if he made it easy to confirm that this was all intentional punishment of political opponents. But the evidence suggests there is some potential.
On the subject of the abuse of state power, it is pretty safe to say that Trump and Biden are not too different.
Stacking the Supreme Court
The author who listed “stacking” the Supreme Court probably meant “packing” the Supreme Court. The whole idea behind “packing” the court is that the Constitution does not define a fixed number of justices, so Congress can change the number of justices with legislation, if signed by the President. Neither president did this. At least not yet.
During his tenure, Trump did appoint three justices to the Supreme Court: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch. But he was only able to do that because three seats on the Supreme Court were vacated during Trump’s tenure. His appointees tend to adhere to the Constitution as it is written more so than the liberal Supreme Court justices. And there is no doubt that they are conservative-leaning when it comes to the interpretation of the law.
Biden has also appointed a justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is liberal-leaning and has demonstrated that she has issues with the U.S. Constitution (specifically how the first amendment hampers the government’s ability to suppress speech). If another seat opens up during Biden’s presidency, he will appoint another liberal judge.
This seems like a non-issue as it is just business as usual. Both did exactly as expected. They appointed judges who reflect the impulses of those who voted for them. Once again, it is difficult to discern one strategy from the other and it only makes sense that they would nominate judges that align with their voters’ interests.
Enforcing the Law for Only One Side
Enforcing the law for only one side? Hmm. Are there any examples of that? What about that whole mishandling classified documents thing? Let’s look at the U.S. Code:
“Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.”
Classified documents were retained and improperly stored by the following high-ranking individuals in the U.S. government: President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, Vice President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Biden stored classified information at his home in Delaware and at an office in D.C. Clinton’s documents were stored on an unclassified and unsecured server that was actually hacked, according to the FBI. Pence had classified documents at his Indiana home.
Some media outlets that are comfortable running cover for Biden have claimed that the sensitivity of his documents were different than that of Trump’s documents. Biden’s were Sensitive Compartmentalized Information while Trump’s were Secret or Top Secret. All of those documents are classified and are subject to the same restrictions and punishments per the U.S. Code. However, only Trump has been indicted.
It is probably true that there were cases in which Mr. Trump enforced or attempted to enforce the law for his benefit. Let’s face it, it is almost unfathomable that a guy like Trump would not at least attempt to enforce laws for his benefit. But in the most prominent scenario, the law about retaining documents at an unauthorized location has thus far only been enforced against him. So, in this case, it appears Biden’s administration is more nefarious than Trump’s.
Rigging the System
Ok, we will try to ease into this one because people get sensitive about Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged. We won’t be getting into those claims.
However, it seems that Trump was out of his depth on this one. Perhaps there should be little doubt that Trump would have rigged the system if he was savvy enough to do so. Biden, on the other hand, is surrounded by people who could teach a masterclass on rigging the system by taking out the opposition. The Democratic National Convention set up new rules to exclude Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the Democratic candidacy. Meanwhile, Trump is going to be so mired in legal battles that he will hardly have time to campaign. Biden has reportedly raised more money than any presidential campaign in history. But is he going to use those funds to amplify his message about why he should be reelected? No, his message is too frail. He is going to use that money to attack his opponents.
Fear-Mongering
The Democrats/liberals started the fear-mongering about Trump well before his first election. Few if any of those fears were realized to any greater degree than seen in any other recent presidency. And in 2020, Trump did warn of actions by Biden that never really materialized. Both campaigns employed scare tactics and those tactics probably did little to move the needle. Both continue to employ scare tactics. The thing is, we now have four years of performance in the White House to review for both of them. The biggest knock against Trump (besides him being a world-class jerk) was how he handled the pandemic.
Trump is also routinely criticized for having productive relationships with various autocrats and authoritarians around the world, including the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, North Korea’s dictator, the president of China, the president of Russia, the president of Egypt. None of these are good guys. He did not bend to their will, but he publicly stroked their egos and that was evidently part of keeping them somewhat in check. The mainstream media would have you believe that fostering good relationships with dictators makes Trump himself a dictator. We would counter that sentiment with one simple question: Why make enemies of any of these people? How can you resolve conflicts with someone whom you have alienated? Look where it has gotten Biden — he’s looking down the barrel of World War III.
The author of a book called The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner, wrote this 2020 article about Trump, to whom he refers as “Fearmonger-in-Chief.” Glassner points to Trump’s claims about “crime, terrorism, and people of color.” In case that was not direct enough, Glassner wrote, “Trump’s fearmongering crosses previously uncrossed racist lines.” His article had little substance to support this claim, so let us highlight a couple of the more egregious accusations: Trump promoted fear by warning (in his ridiculous style) that criminals are crossing the border, and he is racist for banning travel to and from certain countries.
U.S. Custom and Border Patrol actually has some statistics on “Arrests of Individuals with Criminal Records,” in which they document the arrests of criminal noncitizens (individuals who have been convicted of one or more crimes, whether in the U.S. or abroad). Here are the numbers for Trump’s presidency:
2017: 8,531
2018: 6,698
2019: 4,269
2020: 2,438
Here are the numbers for the Biden presidency, thus far:
2021: 10,763
2022: 12, 028
2023: 15,267
2024 (in less than four months, so far): 8,799
This data shows that in the first four months of 2024, Border Patrol agents have arrested more migrants with criminal records than any single year of the Trump administration. Criminals are indeed crossing. And they are committing crimes. History, data, and facts have acquitted Trump of the charge that he was fear-mongering about criminals entering the country. Biden’s open-border policy has promoted the inflow of migrants (which includes tens of thousands of criminals), and it has cost American lives, property, tax dollars, and law & order.
The New York Times published an opinion piece describing Trump’s travel bans as racist. President Biden also restricted travel during the pandemic, per NPR — but the liberal media is not accusing him of being racist. Chances are that both of these rich old white guys are indeed racist. It does not matter if they still get your votes.
Biden warned us in September 2023 that “Donald Trump and his allies are a menace to American democracy.” Trump later returned the favor by calling Biden “the destroyer of American democracy.” A quick reminder: they were both in office for four years and American democracy still exists. The fear-mongering is a two-way street. They both do it. Fear equates to votes.
These two are a reflection of each other. Except for one thing: Despite warnings that Trump’s approach would lead us to World War III, it is Biden’s leadership that has taken the world to the brink of a third world war. No fear-mongering is necessary. This business is scary.
Demonizing the Opposition
Yeah, Trump demonizes his opponents. He demonizes his allies. He has scapegoats for everything. He never accepts responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Biden doesn’t need to demonize anyone (although he certainly demonizes Trump). He has nearly the entire corporate media to do it for him. They are both part of a system that casts their opponents as the worst of humanity, as criminals, as threats to democracy. They employ the same tactics. They are a reflection of one another.
Other Predictions
Another 2016 prediction was that Trump would repeal ObamaCare. His efforts to that end were unsuccessful. 2024 Trump says he does not intend to repeal ObamaCare but does plan to improve it and lower health care costs for Americans.
It was claimed that Trump would repeal some of his predecessor’s executive orders. He did. So did Biden. This has become standard procedure in the White House. This is also an indicator that executive orders are very temporary and lack the power of actual legislation.
In 2017, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) stated that Donald Trump was setting the country “on the path to World War III.” In January 2024, Douglas Schoen (former adviser to President Bill Clinton) warned that “Biden’s failure to deter Iran risks World War III in the Middle East.” In both comments, we see their own party “mongering fear” about the leadership of these two men. But we also have results to consider. Trump concluded his presidency with improving peaceful conditions in the Middle East in the form of the Abraham Accords and by holding Russia at bay (starting with the 2017 indictments of Russian hackers and signing a 2017 Russia sanctions bill). With respect to Ukraine, Trump enhanced defensive capabilities to aid in fighting off Russia-backed separatists and Ukraine would have certainly been more vulnerable without his support. However, it has been Biden who has perpetuated the Ukrainian war with Russia and whose policies have contributed to the reversal of the Middle East stabilization that Trump achieved. It is under Biden’s leadership that global powers are closer to a third world war than ever before.
There were more Trump predictions, which continue on today, but the point here is that predictions either never come to be, they are business as usual, or they come true for both Trump and Biden.
Part Two: Similarities
In addition to the common ground we detect through analysis of the predictions about the Trump presidency, Presidents Trump and Biden also have a number of stark similarities. Some of these are our observations, some are pulled from a 2021 article by Greg Valliere. Here is a list of similarities:
Both Biden and Trump demonstrated staunch support for Israel during their presidencies.
Both take credit for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Both supported harmful and ineffective pandemic lockdowns.
Both ignored advice of their national security advisors.
Both keep U.S. allies in the dark.
Both wanted to end “nation-building” and bring troops home from Afghanistan.
Actions by both prompted congressional hearings and investigations.
Both contributed to building “The Wall” on the southwest border.
Both employed adversarial policies pertaining to China (as did President Obama).
Both escalated support for Taiwan.
Trump put in place tariffs on Chinese imports. Biden has left them in place.
Both negotiated deals with China to stem the flow of fentanyl and its precursors to Mexico and ultimately to the U.S. Both were unsuccessful.
Trump imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
Trump pulled out of the “Iran Nuclear Deal” because of Iran’s lack of compliance and Biden has been unable to return to the deal because of Iran’s lack of compliance.
Trump sold $8 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia; Biden sold $200 million in missiles to the dictatorship in Egypt in 2021 and later authorized $2.5 billion in arms sales to Egypt in 2022 (but oddly cut $130 million in military aid just days later).
Both gave lifts to the economy with big tax cuts and new spending.
Both took issue with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
Both speak out against drug prices, even though their policies are not a strong reflection of that sentiment.
Both face criticism from their respective party’s moderates.
Both confused the public on COVID policy and information.
Both used the flow of migrants across the southern border to polarize America.
Neither president has demonstrated a particularly effective environmental policy, at least according to the widespread and misunderstood measuring sticks that the climate change activist media employ. Trump’s administration saw lower CO2 emissions than both his predecessor and successor (though he will never get credit for that) and got skewered for reversing Obama’s ineffective and dangerous environmental policies. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration quietly set records for U.S. oil production (but he will never get blamed for that) and was applauded for reversing Trump’s reversal of Obama policies.
As discussed previously, Trump and Biden are currently engaged in the same rhetoric, each claiming that the other is a threat to democracy.
That is a lot of similarities!
Bringing It On Home
In this article, we highlight how the 2016 fears about a Donald Trump presidency were mostly realized… during the Biden presidency. That is, the idea of the guy that people feared in 2016 was a reflection of the guy that took office in 2021. Biden is reflection of everything that everyone feared or disliked about Trump. And then there are the similarities, which are just too great.
The similarities have spilled over to their supporters as well. Similar to how Trump supporters have become numb to the negative claims and accusations against him, Biden supporters have become numb to the ideological drivel and the rationalization of bad policy. Supporters on both sides are numb to the dishonesty of their guy and the other guy. The numbing effect of the coverage of these presidents has lulled the public into a disheartened but complacent state. Trump and Biden have had a chance to preside over the United States and it is high time to pull ourselves out of the trajectory that they have put us on.
As independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out during an interview with Dave Rubin, there are ways of talking about issues “that bring us together, but that is not going to come from President Biden or President Trump because both of them feed on the polarization; both of them are saying the principle reason you should vote for me is if you vote for the other guy, democracy is going to be over.” Kennedy goes on to say, “There’s no way, if that’s what you are telling the public, that you are going to be capable of ending the polarization.”
In December 2016, as he pondered the disturbing election campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden said, “Elections are supposed to be about referenda on ideas, the direction of the country, that when a president’s elected, they can say: ‘This is what I told you I was gonna do.” The 2024 presidential election is a referendum on both of the most recent four-year terms in the White House, both Trump’s and Biden’s first terms. There are always going to be some differences between what a candidate says he/she wants to accomplish and what they actually do accomplish when elected. Candidate Biden promised a lot of things would be different from the Trump administration. The actual version of President Biden that We the People actually got turns out to be much closer to the predicted version of President Trump that people feared back in 2016, but never really saw once he was in office.
So, go ahead, American voter. Cast your ballot for Trump in 2024 and you just might get the Trump you know. Or cast your ballot for Biden and you just might get the Trump you fear. Either way, it is unlikely that you will be getting what you actually need out of your leadership.