On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris offered her first public remarks since President Biden’s decision to step aside in the upcoming election.
In those remarks, Harris claimed, “Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history,” continuing later, “In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”
She offered nothing in support of these assertions, which easily fall under the most minimal scrutiny.
Supporters of President Biden will try to argue, for example, that he saw America out of the coronavirus pandemic.
This is only technically true, as the perpetual passage of time indeed means that the coronavirus crisis ran its course over the years he was president. By every other metric, he failed on this front.
It was Biden himself who asserted in a debate with then-President Trump that “Anyone who’s responsible for” — at that time 220,000 — “that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
In fact, the number of people who died of COVID under Biden quickly surpassed the number of people who died under President Trump. According to a Newsweek fact check, “the death toll has since continued to rise and surpassed the numbers under the Trump administration sometime in January 2022.”
At the time Biden took office, inflation stood at 1.4%.
Trillions of dollars in spending later — including some falsely marketed as necessary for America to bounce back from the pandemic — Americans have been left with drastically reduced buying power.
According to FactCheck.org, “Inflation spiked to the highest level in over 40 years. Despite recent moderation, consumer prices are up nearly 18% overall during Biden’s time.”
What else?
Biden has relentlessly pushed unconstitutional student loan forgiveness schemes, including one spiked by the U.S. Supreme Court and another blocked just last week by an appeals court.
Biden managed to fumble his responsibilities over the southern border for several years, taking decisive action only as the presidential election approached and only by targeting asylum seekers.
If there’s a metric that Biden has over Trump, it’s that his administration collected far more in trade war tariffs. According to the Tax Foundation, as of March, $144 billion in tariffs were collected under Biden compared to the $89 billion under Trump. In other words, Biden chose to inflict far more pain on importers and punish international trade. Hurray?
Of course, Vice President Harris has a vested interest in perpetuating the myth of a successful Biden presidency. Her own record of accomplishments is paper thin.
As vice president, she managed to experience historically low approval ratings despite not actually having many things to do.
She built her career as district attorney in San Francisco. As The New York Times reported in 2016, “In 2015, judges called out her office for defending convictions obtained by local prosecutors who inserted a false confession into the transcript of a police interrogation, lied under oath and withheld crucial evidence from the defense.”
Needless to say, with judgment like that and with the facts being what they are, we can’t take seriously Vice President Harris’ assessment of how the Biden administration has done.
Originally Published: July 23, 2024 at 12:05 p.m.
