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Gus Davis

Professor Hellmers

English 1201

May 8, 2022

Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s Politics are Eerily Similar

“I will never say that progress is being made. If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull

it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The

progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even begun to pull the knife

out, much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”

-Malcolm X-

Throughout his presidential campaign, different ideas and viewpoints were circulated about Joe

Biden and his administration. He ran on and promised what has been called “The most

progressive democratic agenda America has ever seen. (NRSC)” Many progressives endorsed his

campaign on the belief that he would stick to his campaign promises and enact a plan to begin

healing the numerous wounds of our nation, its people, and its institutions. Many media outlets

expressed high hopes for the Biden administration to handle the pandemic in juxtaposition to

Trump’s awful Covid response agenda. With the help of the media and the naivety of Americans

who want to do the right thing, Biden was able to convince the left that his election would

somehow put an immediate stop to the tyrannical bigotry of Donald Trump and his
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administration. As for those who weren’t convinced, they still felt that he was the only option

because he was “The lesser of two evils.” Most of the time, they are correct in this assessment,

but must not forget that just because there is less of it, there is still a profound amount of evil that

still has sole governance of America and tremendous influence over the rest of the world. In

reality, Biden and Trump’s policies are very similar in many areas. The main thing that has

changed is the aesthetic of the person in charge. Trump ran on and governed his right-wing,

white supremacist ideas openly. Biden has taken a different approach, of saying one thing and

then legislating something completely different. Biden is a self-proclaimed democrat with a

myriad of conservative stances, that he sugarcoats with neoliberal talking points. His

administration is proof that just voting blue and nothing more is not enough, and won’t reverse

or even halt the regression of our country toward a right-wing authoritarian government.

Joe Biden has a long history with politics and a long history of white supremacist, right-leaning

stances on many issues. In 1989, Joe Biden toured the country campaigning for the Democratic

presidential nominee at the time, Bill Clinton. Clinton was another self-proclaimed Democrat

who had conservative ideals on many issues, and his nomination presented Biden with a chance

to connect with Clinton’s white conservative voters who Biden felt aligned with his ideals Biden

followed Clinton’s lead politically, holding right-wing views on important issues, but still voting

in favor of the democratic party on the less important issues. He continued to engage with the

Clinton presidency, and on many occasions was known to advise Clinton not to engage with

liberals, and was suspected of multiple corruption scandals. Biden and Clinton continued with

man Reagan era policies, putting all their energy into the deficit, and paying very little attention

to the needs working class. He also supported President George H W. Bush’s North American
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Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) which would end up costing almost 700,000 American jobs and

slashing the powers of many unions(Marcetic). His rap sheet of racist, classist, and overall

right-wing politics went on and on like this for years. Multiple allegations of sexual misconduct

have also been leveled against him, as well as multiple other scandals. It comes as no surprise

that his presidential administration would follow this same pattern of being aesthetically liberal,

but politically conservative.

Despite all of the big talk and promises from Biden during his campaign, his policies and

agenda are hardly distinguishable from those of his predecessor. This is a two-tailed issue

because very few people on either side of politics even realize this fact. The Biden administration

appeared to hit the ground running, launching a swarm of executive orders that appeared to be a

nice change of pace. In reality, Biden was taking one small step forward after the two leaps back

in the previous four years under Trump. The orders were full of exploits intended to preserve the

Trumpian status quo. The Biden administration’s continuation of Trump era policy is evident in

their immigration policy. This area was perhaps the area where Trump attracted the most

attention from his supporters by commoditizing his “border wall” promise. Biden is now

discreetly continuing the construction of the unfinished border wall. He has also kept in place

inhumane policies that reek of white supremacy, such as the “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42

policies. These subject asylum seekers to violence and barbaric conditions in their search for a

life free of the violence that can be directly attributed to American intervention. Biden has used

these policies to deport more migrants in just his first two years in office than Trump did in four.

Biden faced retaliation after attempting to keep the refugee cap at 15,000, the lowest in history.

This rare protesting led to Biden backtracking and increasing it by a small margin. This is
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nothing new for Joe Biden, he has taken a white supremacist approach to his policies for years.

This is the only way to rationalize it, for it has been proven time and time again that immigration

actually helps the American economy.

When it comes to freedom of the press, Biden has a track record of hypocrisy. His

treatment of several New York Times reporters is eerily similar to Trump’s actions that Biden

declared were “simply, simply wrong”. He made it very clear that this type of maneuver was one

that he and his administration would never stoop to attempting. It has since come to light that in

secret, Biden actually strengthened the injustice on first amendment rights from the Trump

presidency. Biden continued to administer subpoenas to obtain the contents of the reporters’

emails and issued a gag order on a New York Times attorney so that he was unable to testify

about the seizure of the documents by the government. The government then went on to try to

prohibit the higher-ups from the New York Times from releasing any information in regards to

the legal battle(Ryan). The Biden administration also has continued the prosecution of

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The American government has had a bone to pick with

Assange since his publication of military and government secrets that were leaked by American

whistleblower Chelsea Manning(Savage). Assange is currently confined in a maximum security

facility in London for sexual assault charges that many believe were fabricated by the U.S.

government. The American government has continued to pursue his extradition to the United

States so he can be tried for what they deem to be a violation of the Espionage Act. Many civil

liberties groups have applied pressure on Biden to drop this case, as they believe it violates the

first amendment. Both of these attacks on American freedom of the press represent an assault on
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an important agent of the public to keep their elected officials and the almost limitless power

these officials hold, in check.

In the realm of foreign policy, Biden's policy has distinguished itself from Trump’s in a

few areas but is a stark continuation in the overall majority. The frontrunner of the

aforementioned outliers is Biden’s Afghanistan pullout, from which he received extensive

backlash from the establishment media. This withdrawal has been long overdue and is one of the

few actions taken by the Biden administration that shows real regard for the lives of non-white

people. As a result of this decision, American airstrikes have decreased by a whopping fifty-four

percent. Aside from this and a couple of other less notable policy decisions, the foreign policy of

Donald Trump and Joe Biden have quite a resemblance. He has stuck with Trump’s blockades

and incredibly harmful sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. He has continued or caused

humanitarian crises in at least four countries. These also include his greedy, revenge-driven

sanctions that are causing mass suffering and death to Afghani citizens. The media and

government used the plight of the Afghan citizens in order to justify an otherwise unjustifiable

war, and then tossed that concern in the trash once it no longer benefited them. This ignorance

does not change the fact that over one million children face a risk of dying of starvation in

Afghanistan(Marcetic). The Biden administration has also provided support and aid to Isreal and

endorsed its cultural genocide of Palestine. Biden has also promised to help end the man-made

famine taking place in Yemen, yet he has continued to sell weapons and supplies to Saudi

Arabia, which is faulted with prolonging the war there. Chairman Jehan Hakim of the San

Francisco-based Yemeni Alliance Committee stated in an NPR interview, “I can't understand a

strategy that can justify the killing hundreds of thousands of civilians because without the
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support of the U.S. when it comes to arms sales, logistical support, Saudi Arabia cannot continue

its aggression on Yemen”(Northam). Her cries, as well as the cries of many others, continue to

fall on the deaf ears of the American government.

Despite continued police brutality against protestors and civilians, Biden has doubled funds for

police hiring programs of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services(COPS), which is
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a part of the Department of Justice(Semler).

(Semler)

Biden has also increased police funding in many areas that have seen an increase in crime,

completely ignoring the outrage across the nation. Karissa Lewis, National Field Director of
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Movement for Black Lives, stated the following in response to this, “The root cause of crime is

poverty, but instead of making investments in our communities, people in positions of power are

pushing for more money for police. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s

plan puts the lives of millions of Black and Brown people at risk by increasing the already

looming and violent police presence in our communities. (M4BL)” Since 2015, The Washington

Post has recorded over 5,000 fatal shootings by an on-duty police officer in the U.S(TWP). They

have also logged that black Americans are shot at a much more frequent rate than white

Americans. Due to Biden’s constant increases in police funding, he is helping the police to be

better equipped to murder more people, and then violently repress any form of protest that is sure

to result from these murders(Marcetic).

One of the most critical factors for Biden’s win over Trump was Covid-19. Trump’s

covid response was abhorrent, and this gave Biden something that affected the lives of all

Americans to hold over Trump’s head during the campaigns. Biden’s entire campaign essentially

relied on his promises that he would handle the pandemic differently than Donald Trump’s

response, which was solely reliant on vaccines. Before taking office, Biden supervised a 200+

page plan for combatting covid 19 and restoring public faith in the government. Now that he has

taken power, he has failed to execute important areas of this plan. Biden has failed in numerous

categories such as data collection and worker protection, which is ironic considering his constant

rhetoric about how American progress knows no limit. The Biden administration told the public

to, “Google ‘COVID test near me’” completely ignoring how difficult this would be for a large

number of lower-class individuals all over America. Biden also funneled the testing through

insurance companies, jeopardizing millions of people who are uninsuredMarcetic). The Biden
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administration has handled the pandemic in a strikingly similar fashion to the Trump

Administration. This is ironic considering Biden’s condemnation of Trump’s Covid 19 Response

and Biden’s campaign promises of better handling of the situation. There have also been more

covid 19 deaths under Biden than under Trump, and there were quite a lot under Trump.

The most notable failure of Biden and his administration is the complete lack of action
addressing the global climate crisis. Our planet is running out of time, and Biden and the
government know this. Despite this fact, Biden continues to do nothing to reduce emissions in
any meaningful capacity. Not only has the Biden administration failed to act, but they also have
actually accelerated the climate change crisis. They also continually lie to the people in order to
undermine the seriousness of global warming. Biden has undone a few of Trump’s dastardly
climate policies, but this is another instance of Biden taking one step forward after Trump took
two steps back. One of these policies is reentering the Paris Climate Accords. Although this
decision was cast as a progressive action, the reality is that the large majority of nations failed
immensely in reaching their Paris Climate Accord goals(Leahy). Only when the Biden
administration is in front of a screen or camera do they seem to care about the oncoming climate
crisis in the slightest. The Biden administration has also continued to strip protections away from
endangered species behind the scenes. As one wildlife conservationist put it, “We'd hoped that
the horrific anti-wildlife tactics so often employed during the Trump era had ended, but it
appears we were wrong(Conley).” Like many of Biden’s policies, his pause on new oil and gas
leases was designed to get the maximum amount of positive PR, while doing the minimum to
actually help anything that they could without it being noticeable. And even this was denied by
the courts and Biden then went on to approve more oil drilling permits than Trump did in his
time in office. The administration also lied in court about its auctioning of land in Mexico. They
then pulled a Donald Trump and flat out renounced the existence of climate change. In an
account from an environmental group it is stated, “In fact, Biden’s officials have instead used
that power to officially declare that the warnings in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on
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Climate Change (IPCC) report ‘does not present sufficient cause’ to reevaluate the drilling plan.”
(Bragman)

Although the United States is not formally at war with any country, Biden has allowed for
multiple deadly drone strikes. The most recent strike occurred in the city of Kabul and killed 10
civilians, 7 of them being children. It is not to be ignored that drone strikes have dropped
significantly under the Biden administration, but these instances are still war crimes and should
be treated as such. In a letter to Joe Biden from congressional Democrats, it was written,” We
cannot accept a continuation of the status quo that has repeatedly resulted in the needless deaths
of innocent civilians," the letter went on to say. "We strongly urge your Administration to review
and overhaul US counterterrorism policy to center human rights and the protection of civilians,
align with US and international law, prioritize non-lethal tools to address conflict and fragility,
and only use force when it is lawful and as a last resort.” (Haltiwanger)

In the considerable majority of circumstances, an incredible amount of pressure is necessary for

the Biden administration to even underdeliver on promises. There is a large amount of bipartisan
agreement that Joe Biden is perhaps the most progressive president ever, yet he holds right-wing,
white supremacist stances on nearly all important issues that are related to progress. His policies
are nearly identical to Donald Trump’s, the only difference is the attitude that they each portray
to the world, with Trump embracing the role of the right-wing proto-fascist, and Biden larping as
a progressive while he does little to halt the regression, and a lot to accelerate it. It is not enough
for the left to believe that voting blue is the most they can do. It has been shown time and time
again that the establishment Democrats will use the power they are given in whatever way they
choose, completely ignoring the demands of the people who put them there.
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Works Cited

Biden Confirms His Agenda is the “Most Progressive” in History - NRSC, 26 May 2021,

https://www.nrsc.org/press-releases/biden-confirms-his-agenda-is-the-most-progressive-i

n-history-2021-05-26/. Accessed 8 May 2022.

“'A Gut Punch': Biden Interior Dept Quietly Plans to Strip Protections From Key Species.”

Common Dreams, 13 December 2021,

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/13/gut-punch-biden-interior-dept-quietly-

plans-strip-protections-key-species. Accessed 8 May 2022.

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Deepa, Kumar. “Rightwing and Liberal Islamophobia: The Change of Imperial Guard from

Trump to Biden.” Taylor Francis Online, South Asian Review, 5 April 2021,

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02759527.2021.1899517?journalCode=rso

a20. Accessed 8 May 2022.

Diamond, Dan. “Assessing Biden's covid response after one year.” The Washington Post, 18

January 2022,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/18/biden-covid-response-assessment/.

Accessed 8 May 2022.

Haltiwanger, John. “Dozens of Democrats Call Out Biden Over Drone Strikes That Kill

Civilians.” Business Insider, 20 January 2022,

https://www.businessinsider.com/dozens-of-democrats-call-out-biden-over-drone-strikes-

that-kill-civilians-2022-1. Accessed 8 May 2022.

Karwowski, Maciej. “When in Danger, Turn Right: Does Covid-19 Threat Promote Social

Conservatism and Right-Wing Presidential Candidates?” PsyArXiv, PsyArXiv Preprints,

31 March 2020, https://psyarxiv.com/pjfhs. Accessed 8 May 2022.

Leahy, Stephen. “Most countries aren't hitting Paris climate goals, and everyone will pay the

price.” National Geographic, 5 November 2019,

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nations-miss-paris-targets-climate-dr

iven-weather-events-cost-billions. Accessed 8 May 2022.

Marcetic, Branko. “The Humanitarian Warmongers Couldn't Care Less About the US Sanctions

Killing Afghans.” Jacobin, 8 January 2022,

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/01/afghanistan-sanctions-biden-war-taliban-drought.

Accessed 8 May 2022.

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“Movement for Black Lives Responds to Biden's Plan to Allow Cities to Use Federal Stimulus

Money to Increase Funding for Police Departments.” M4BL,

https://m4bl.org/statements/bidens-plan-stimulus-money-funding-police/. Accessed 8

May 2022.

Northam, Jackie. “A U.S. weapons sale is raising doubts about Biden's promise to help end war

in Yemen.” NPR, 25 November 2021,

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/25/1059262052/a-u-s-weapons-sale-is-raising-doubts-about-

bidens-promise-to-help-end-war-in-yem. Accessed 8 May 2022.

Ryan, Fred. “Opinion | Something appears to be 'simply, simply wrong' at the Biden Justice

Department.” The Washington Post, 6 June 2021,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/06/fred-ryan-biden-doj-press/.

Accessed 8 May 2022.

Savage, Charlie. “Biden Administration Urged to Drop Julian Assange Case.” The New York

Times, 29 October 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment.html.

Accessed 8 May 2022.

Semsler, Stephen. “Biden doubles funding for police hiring program.” Substck, Speaking

Security, 18 June 2021,

https://stephensemler.substack.com/p/biden-doubles-funding-for-police?s=r. Accessed 8

May 2022.