Note: Joel B. Pollak’s new ebook, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency, is out today.
President Joe Biden is not as radical as conservatives said he would be. He is much, much worse.
The man who was sold to Americans as a “moderate” by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, and who told voters, “I beat the socialist,” has been the most radical president in U.S. history.
Biden has proposed a staggering $6 trillion in spending, most of it unpaid for, and most of it on big government programs. He has also proposed massive tax hikes, in the midst of what he claims is a historic economic crisis.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has called Biden’s first 100 days in office a “bait and switch,” and he’s not wrong. True, Biden promised Democrats he would be the most “progressive” president since FDR, but he also boasted of working across the aisle with Republicans. He devoted his Inaugural Address to the theme of “unity,” to the exclusion of any description of his actual policies. Americans were led to believe that Biden represented a return to consensus, to “normal.”
No sooner had he arrived at the Oval Office, however, then Biden signed a pile of radical executive orders, delivering the far-left’s wish list. He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, the most environmentally-friendly way of delivering Canadian oil to the American market, because radical environmentalists are opposed to any new fossil fuel development. Thousands of what Biden calls “good, paying, union jobs” were destroyed. The administration promised “green” jobs to replace them — one day.
Biden also decreed that transgenderism would have to be accepted in school sports, meaning that biologically male athletes would be able to compete with girls. This blunt imposition of federal authority, and a one-size-fits-all approach, overrode the efforts of local communities to work out a difficult issue on a school-by-school, case-by-case basis.
Biden also introduced an idea called racial “equity,” shunning old-fashioned “equality” in favor of new discrimination, ostensibly to remedy the old.
Not once in 100 days has Biden exercised a moderating influence. He has backed the “cancel culture” and efforts by Silicon Valley giants to censor conservatives. The Biden White House echoes the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement, condemning America for “systemic racism,” and describing the death of knife-wielding Ma’Khia Bryant as “police violence.”
Biden threw the southern border open to thousands of migrants, bringing back “kids in cages” (but keeping the media out).
During the campaign, Biden evaded the question of whether he would pack the Supreme Court, as left-wing Democrats demanded. He then promised a “commission” to study the issue, which seemed to suggest he was shelving the radical idea. But when Democrats decided to introduce legislation to pack the Court anyway, Biden refused to rule it out. He also urged the Senate to put former President Donald Trump on trial and to “reform” the filibuster rule, which he had once defended.
Biden also wants the Senate to pass H.R. 1, the Democrats’ effort to take over the country’s voting system, and the “PRO Act,” which would introduce “card check” in union elections, effectively ending the secret ballot.
After attacking Trump for questioning the outcome of the 2020 election, Biden declined to accept the result of an election among Amazon workers who voted against unionization by the staggering margin of 71% to 29%. That is how much he actually cares about democracy.
In foreign policy, Biden is back to appeasing Iran and losing to China. He rejoined the pointless Paris Climate Agreement and the corrupt UN Human Rights Council; his UN Ambassador proclaimed “white supremacy” was part of “our founding documents and principles.”
And for all that, what has Biden actually achieved?
He is proud that over 200 million shots of coronavirus vaccines have been delivered. But Operation Warp Speed — which Biden mocked — began under Trump, as did the vaccinations, which sputtered when Biden suspended Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine over rare blood clots.
The economy grew at 6.4% in the first quarter — but before Biden’s “COVID relief” stimulus, and thanks to re-openings that Biden called “Neanderthal thinking.”
That “COVID relief” bill is Biden’s only real accomplishment, and one that perfectly captures the swindle at the core of the Biden administration. Much of the bill has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic; billions are devoted to bailing out Democrat-run governments and failing pension funds, for example. Biden promised to work with Republicans, but when they showed up at the White House with an alternative proposal, he refused to compromise. Not one penny was cut.
The slavish media coverage will continue, but the honeymoon is over, and so is the illusion.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.