Burke: ‘Why not write about Biden, for once?’ Don’t mind if I do.
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 27, 2024
By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist
I’m sometimes asked why I write (so negatively? so much?) about Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans and hardly at all about President Biden and Democrats.
Is it because I have Trump Derangement Syndrome? Because I hate America? Because I’m “vermin”? Because I’m a commie, leftist, crooked, radical-left-thug-socialist, or a Trump-hating Democrat?
Nope.
It’s because I believe Trump is dangerous to our democracy, our economy, internation trade, world peace, and our social norms.
And Biden is not.
It’s because I feel a responsibility to warn people about Trump’s stated goal to be a “dictator” on Day 1; his “love” of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists who he says were, “horribly and unfairly treated” and are now “hostages,” and because he said, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate,” allowing a resurgence of polio and iron lungs and little kids in braces, and pre-school pandemics of measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus and whooping cough.
But they asked; so let’s look at Biden and his record as president thus far:
• Biden’s covid-19 response, the American Rescue Plan, sent Americans a $1,400 payment; extended federal unemployment benefits; temporarily expanded the child tax credit program reducing childhood poverty; and provided $128 billion in grants for state educational agencies. (Biden didn’t recommend swallowing bleach, lightbulbs, or taking horse medicine; as Trump did.)
• Biden passed a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill to repair the nation’s roads, bridges and railways, and bring high-speed internet to rural communities.
• He led support for Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion.
• He got the first major gun-safety bill in decades.
• His $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act will build semiconductor chips here instead of in China.
• His and Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act helped reduce the federal deficit, brought down some prescription drug costs, limited out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 for Medicare enrollees, and allocated $369 billion for climate initiatives; while raising $300 billion in new revenue by taxing the rich.
• He delivered health benefits to seniors via negotiated drug prices, capping insulin at $35, and insuring Medicare beneficiaries pay nothing out-of-pocket for recommended adult vaccines.
• He created nearly 11 million jobs.
• He signed the PACT Act expanding benefits and services for toxic exposed veterans and authorized 31 new VA clinical sites.
• He provided student debt relief for more than 40 million borrowers, for the 90 percent earning less than $75,000 per year.
• And he was set to sign significant immigration reform, with provisions sought by conservative Senate Republicans, but Trump had his minions kill it to preserve the chaos and cruelty on the border as an election issue for himself.
For me that’s record enough for a second term.
But back to Trump and how only four of Trump’s 44 former Cabinet officials have endorsed him.
The former staffers rejecting him start with Vice President Mike Pence; and all say he’s dangerous and reckless, and his revenge and retribution campaign make him unfit for the White House. So, people who are planning to vote for Trump next time, why do you think you know him better than:
• Liz Cheney: “If Trump wins we’ll be living in a nation that’s unrecognizable, and the danger is so grave that, for the first time in my life, I will be working with every fiber of my body against the Republican nominee for president.”
• Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley: “Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.”
• National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster: “The foremost reason for the assault on the Capitol was Trump’s sustained disinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories. We saw the absence of leadership, really anti-leadership.”
• Defense Secretary John Mattis: “Never did I dream that troops would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief, Donald Trump.”
• White House Chief of Staff John Kelly: “Trump has no idea what America stands for”; and “He called American service members ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ and that he didn’t want to be seen with amputee veterans because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’”
• National Security Advisor John Bolton: “Having been in the room with him, dictators think Trump is a laughing fool and they are prepared to take advantage of him.”
• Attorney General Bill Barr: “Trump is a consummate narcissist who constantly engages in reckless conduct. He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.”
To be clear, I’m never going to convince dyed-in-the-wool, Trump-won-the-election, was-sent-by-God, Christian nationalist, good-people-on-both-sides MAGA Republicanss that Trump is a fraud, a liar and a cheat. (Although he was found civilily liable as a sexual abuser and fraudster.)
But there may still be some people who haven’t yet figured out Trump is a danger or absorbed all the good Biden has accomplished. It’s for you this column is written.
Slava Ukraini.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
