Thread by @TheValuesVoter

One of the differences between Biden’s term in office and Trump’s term at this point in 2017 is that most (but not all) of Biden’s crises are not of his own making.

Afghanistan? Yes. Biden definitely deserves some blame for that. But Trump shares in the blame for that too.

At this point four years ago, Trump was facing:

- Calls for investigation because the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election, working to help him and hurt his opponent. This fact was confirmed by the then GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee last year.

- Calls for impeachment because he fired the FBI Director two months after he announced publicly that the FBI was investigating the Trump Campaign over the election.

- Not forcefully denouncing and partially excusing participants in a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

Responding in an interview question on Fox News asking if Russian President Vladimir Putin was a murderer with an insult of his own country. “You think our country’s so innocent?”

- The fact that his first National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn, was fired after only 24 days for lying to both the FBI and to VP Pence about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later plead guilty twice before being pardoned by Trump.

- Trump’s chaotic implementation of what he had originally termed Muslim Ban (December, 2015) and converted to be a Travel Ban aimed at predominantly Muslim countries. The sudden implementation caused chaos throughout America’s airports.

On a bizarre Saturday in March, right after Trump’s then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuses himself in the Russia investigation, Trump erupts at Sessions and then accuses Obama of spying on him.

He then starts a Twitter fight w/Arnold Schwarzenegger over Apprentice ratings.

All of these problems which Trump was dealing with at this point four years ago were either wholly or partially of his own making.

He didn’t inherit a pandemic. He did inherit a bull market and years of continuous job growth. These things were caused by him.

In contrast …

On the day Biden took office, the US was averaging 3,000 deaths a day in COVID deaths. In the most recent #jobsreport, the US had lost 306k jobs in December, 2020 and the jobs reports had been trending down for six straight months.

The US Capitol had been invaded by mostly Trump supporters exactly two weeks earlier in an attempt to halt the certification of the Electoral College, an event that caused the rest of the world to question the stability of Democracy in America.

Just as Trump inherited the War in Afghanistan from Obama, Biden inherited the War from Trump - but with a big caveat. The timer was ticking on an agreement the US made under Trump to leave the country. And only 2,500 soldiers remained in the country.

Biden extended the deadline only from May to August and seems to have operated under the assumption that the Government of Afghanistan would hold until at least then - an assumption that was proven wrong. The withdrawal was chaotic. And Biden is POTUS now. He partly owns this.

But any fair person will acknowledge that Trump owns part of the blame for this as well. But this problem, Afghanistan, is at least partly of Biden’s own making.

Biden has made other mistakes and has said things on occasion that have not been accurate. He has been fact checked by non-partisan fact checkers. But most of Biden’s serious challenges are not ones that he himself created. Unlike Trump.