President Biden is hoping playing the blame game will boost his White House as the new administration braces for its first 100 days assessment.
The Biden team tried to avoid mentioning former President Donald Trump during its post-election transition, after a campaign of drawing stark contrasts. But Biden’s aides will continue casting his predecessor as a political foil as they face growing pressure over his coronavirus pandemic response before the April 30 marker, including over his COVID-19 vaccine distribution and school-opening goals, as well as his proposed $1.9 trillion relief package.
The Biden camp’s tactic likely will keep Trump’s name in circulation and alienate his supporters, while the 45th president retains his iron grip on the Republican Party, which he made clear he intends to keep with a scathing Tuesday statement blasting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as an unskilled and “unsmiling political hack.”
The blame game messaging is also at odds with Biden’s call for unity. But at least one anti-Trump Republican strategist believed the approach is “very smart,” even in a post-impeachment environment where Biden has the space to move past the last four years.
“His approvals are in the toilet. A lot of people on [Capitol] Hill, they don’t really want to defend him if they don’t have to because he was such an embarrassment,” the strategist told the Washington Examiner of Trump after the Jan. 6 United States Capitol attack. “And he’s not loyal himself.”
Biden staffers told Politico over the weekend they would likely rely on the blame game until next year when Democrats need to pivot to the 2022 midterm elections. But it’s a strategy that has long been depended on. Trump and his team blamed former President Barack Obama for a raft of things they inherited until his final weeks in office, eventually adding Biden to those gripes once he emerged as the 2020 Democratic nominee.
Trump even referred to his 2016 rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Georgia — in 2021 before two Jan. 5 Senate runoffs. Obama himself spent years pointing to mistakes he said Republican President George W. Bush made before his term.
A tried-and-true tactic, there are few downsides for Democrats because even if they do help Trump stay relevant, they appear set to start the 2024 cycle in a strong position should he launch another bid, according to the strategist. That’s because while Trump energizes Republicans to his cause, he similarly galvanizes Democrats against him.
“It’s wise to blame him for as much as possible, but there’s a certain line you can’t cross to where it gets to be lying,” the strategist added.
For instance, Vice President Kamala Harris repeated this weekend the falsehood that the Biden administration drafted its national COVID-19 vaccination plan “from scratch.” The same phrase was used last month in an unattributed quote given to CNN, which was quickly debunked by Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and now Biden’s chief medical adviser.
A former Trump campaign official pushed back on Harris’s claim and Biden’s broader tactic, arguing Biden was making the 45th president his coronavirus scapegoat while taking credit for his accomplishments.
“The blatant lies about Trump’s vaccine distribution plan, school openings, and vaccine dose goals might fool the media in the short term, but the lies and shifting goal posts will not be a successful long-term strategy in defeating the virus,” the aide said.
Another Trump campaign alumnus remembered Biden “excoriating” the former president “for blaming others and not taking responsibility.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, however, was adamant Tuesday that Biden “owned” the COVID-19 response before pointing out how little the Trump administration left him.
“What he inherited was not enough supply, not enough vaccinators, not enough places for vaccinations to happen, companies had been left to fend for themselves, and so that’s what he’s been focused on and working on,” Psaki said.
Before the election, Biden seized on then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows conceding Trump’s team was “not going to control the pandemic.” Instead, the two-term vice president promised to “shut down the virus” — as opposed to the country. While Biden began managing expectations during transition, during his first week in office, he admitted there was “nothing” he could do “to change the trajectory” of the virus “in the next several months.”
“I’m going to shut down the virus, but not — I never said I’d do it in two months. I said it took a long time to get here. It’s going take a long time to beat it,” Biden said when asked about the change in tone.
Progress does appear to be slower than Biden anticipated. Speculation emerged Tuesday that the administration was delaying Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress because of setbacks.
Biden himself has suggested that he would deliver remarks this month, but Psaki on Tuesday refused to confirm that time frame. That indicates Biden had wanted to pass his American Rescue Plan through Congress before delivering the speech, aiming to use the remarks to announce an infrastructure-focused stimulus package.
As the House workshops bill text before sending the legislation to the Senate, the White House has struggled to stick to its own messaging on vaccines and school openings. Psaki has had to clarify comments from Biden about vaccination daily targets and a possible timeline for the country to reach herd immunity, or when 75% of the population will be inoculated against COVID-19.
Those stumbles have nothing to do with Trump.
