Contrast Biden and Trump As They Campaign

March 12, 2024 //

This brief news clip provides a sharp contrast between Biden and Trump.

Biden talks about substance and issues. Trump mocks Biden’s stutter. We are reminded of the event in 2016 when Trump ridiculed a journalist with a disability.

Categories Biden, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Politics, Trump

20 Comments Post your own

Joe Jersey says:

March 12, 2024 at 1:17 pm

In Biden’s brilliant SOTU speech, he referenced he-who-shall-not-be-named without using Trump’s name. Good move on Biden’s part. Biden talked about unions and their importance, about protecting Social Security and Medicare while Trump clowns around, stirs up hatreds and spews demagoguery by the truckload.

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Jack Safely says:

March 12, 2024 at 2:00 pm

There is a famous quote from a 19th century Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck: “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.” This Providence will be sorely tested in the coming years as we consider the three people who have the highest odds of being President from 2025-2029.

First we have Joe Biden, who was never regarded as more than a mediocre Senator. President Obama’s first Secretary of Defense – Robert Gates – said this about Biden: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Obama himself once said this: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” It is now obvious to all but the intellectually dishonest and/or the blindly partisan that Biden will not have the cognitive health to serve a second four term.

Next is Kamala Harris, who is only where she is because of past personal relationships and the Democratic party’s obsession with identity politics. She speaks in word salads and shows no depth of knowledge for any serious issue.

Worst of all is the likely GOP nominee, a mentally lazy, deeply uninformed narcissist whose only priority is his own welfare. He speaks like – at best – a dimwitted 8th grade boy. Here is Trump speaking on live TV to CNBC yesterday:

CNBC’S JOE KERNEN: Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else we’re going to be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak. And let’s take a look at outside of the stock market, are, we’re going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50 percent. They say 32 and 33 percent. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50 percent, that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50 percent more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They’ve gotten routed. The middle class in our country has been routed and the middle class largely built our country and they have been treated very, very badly with policy. When I was president, I was doing a job, we’re going to start to pay off debt. We were drill baby drill. We were producing oil, but we were going at a much higher level oil and gas. We were doing, you know, we were third when I started and when they ended, we were one by a long-shot and we were very close, we’re energy independence, we’re very close to becoming energy dominant Joe, we’re gonna be dominant so dominant, like double what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were gonna be paying down debt. We were doing, we were doing a lot of things and then we got hit with Covid. We did a fantastic job with Covid. But nobody, nobody wins with Covid. I guess China found that out because they also really got hit very hard also, but nobody wins with Covid. And so we had to get to we had to do other things. We had to help. You know, if I didn’t do the expenditures that we didn’t do the kinds of things we did for the economy, we would add in 1929-type depression. And I had to stay out in front of it, and we did we did a great job on that and we did with all of the things we’re coming up with Regeneron doing so much else, getting all because you know we had empty when I came in, we had empty, I call them empty cupboards. We had empty shelves, we didn’t have equipment, we didn’t have the gowns, we didn’t have the ventilators. We didn’t have anything. This country wasn’t prepared for a thing like that. And I’m not even blaming anybody in that. Because, you know, when when it came, nobody thought the pandemic would ever happen again. It sounds like an ancient’s problem, not a problem that you’d have you know at that time, you know, in modern, very modern age. It was like an ancient thing. We you know, who, who would ever show I’m not blaming anybody, but we had empty cupboards, and I got them stocked and I got them stocked fast. And we did a great job with it. Never got credit. I got credit for the greatest economy. I got credit for foreign policy. I got credit for knocking out ISIS and not going into wars. But we beat ISIS, but I never got the credit for having done a great job with that.

A country with 330+ million people and this is the best we can choose from for President? Good grief.

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- FLERP! says:
  
  March 12, 2024 at 2:10 pm
  
  Reading that just gave me brain damage.
  
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- dianeravitch says:
  
  March 12, 2024 at 2:14 pm
  
  Jack, I’m betting you would have had a bleak assessment of most of our past presidents. Harry S Truman! A haberdasher! John F. Kennedy! A womanizer! His bootlegger father bought him a seat in Congress! Jimmy Carter! A peanut farmer!
  
  When a person is chosen as president, the country gets not just the one whose name is on the ballot, but policies, programs, and personnel.
  
  With Biden, you get seasoned and knowledgeable appointees. You get a commitment to protect Social Security and Medicare. You get a determination to expand health insurance to all. You get a commitment to strengthen education and to help relieve millions of college debt.
  
  With Trump, you get a vengeful ignorant liar who will hire people whose #1 quality is loyalty to him. You know the policies he will pursue.
  
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  - Jack Safely says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 3:00 pm
    
    Diane,
    
    You bet wrong, another result of your extreme partisanship. Truman was sometimes petty in his political relationships, but he is a top ten President: Marshall Plan, NATO, standing up to Stalin when much of the Left still swooned over him, keeping the best parts of the New Deal in place. JFK was what would now be called a moderate Democrat who could not be nominated by the current Democratic party. Jimmy Carter was highly intelligent but often naive as President, but he was the most admirable former President in the modern era. His operating a business was a positive credential for him.
    
    I am not willing to be a shill for anyone, and I’m not going to say or write transparently false things just to advance someone else’s political career. That’s the job of activists and party hacks, not of journalists or honest bloggers.
    
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 4:47 pm
    
    Jack,
    
    The election of 2024 is one that puts the future of our nation at risk. Trump has told the world what he plans to do, and it’s frightening. Eliminate the civil service. Fire 50,000 civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. Appoint more judges committed to eliminating women’s rights, voting rights, and civil rights. Raise the retirement age for Social Security. Cut Medicare. Arrest and detain millions of undocumented immigrants, no matter how law-abiding and gainfully employed. Withdraw the U.S. from NATO. Stand back as Putin reassembles the USSR.
    
    No fault of Biden cancels out Trump’s fascist agenda.
    
    If that’s extreme partisanship, I plead guilty.
    
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  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 4:06 pm
    
    Clearly we all have biases. Rather than an assessment of the successes and weaknesses of Biden’s first term, some people criticize Biden for being a mediocre senator (?!), and quote a Secretary of Defense under Obama who apparently believes Biden’s “nearly always wrong foreign policy” includes Biden opposing Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan. How did that work out again, Jack?
    
    Did Biden completely “f**k” things up during the last 4 years? It’s hard to accept the word of someone who believes that quoting Obama and Gates provides a good critique of Biden and then has the chutzpah to praise the “top 10” president whose foreign policy decisions were just so spot on.
    
    Having recently watched Oppenheimer, I find it interesting that Jack ignores the elephant in the room about Truman and confines criticism of Truman to Truman sometimes being petty in his personal relationships. As my kid said to me, even if using the first atomic bomb might have been possibly justified as a way to end the war early, why did the US drop the 2nd bomb? That Truman and his petty personal relationships. Tut tut, good thing he was one of the best presidents ever, not like Biden who a always perfect “expert” like Robert Gates says is wrong on every foreign policy.
    
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  - Jack Safely says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 4:29 pm
    
    Joe Biden is very likely guilty of bribery. The foreign businesses and governments that gave money to Biden family members did so only because of Joe’s political standing. No one with background in the financial world doubts this statement. And Joe will lose in a landslide this year if his non-enforcement of border security results in terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland. See the FBI director’s recent testimony to Congress about this matter.
    
    I differ from this blog’s host and other commenters in being willing to acknowledge the flaws in both Biden and Trump.
    
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- Lloyd Lofthouse says:
  
  March 12, 2024 at 4:54 pm
  
  Clearly, Jack Safely is a troll, willingly or paid.
  
  If JS is a MAGA devotee, he’s just another FOX fake NEWS brainwashed troll.
  
  Still, Putin’s hackers and paid trolls must have search spiders crawling the internet looking for key words where they can leave bloated biased, misleading crap like this.
  
  Jack, I have a suggestion. Add a middle name between Jack and Safely.
  
  OFF
  
  I doubt that Biden cognitive abilities are going to go downhill that much in the next few years. He doesn’t have any signs of developing dementia.
  
  Former President Carter is 99 years old and his ability to reason is still sound. After all, he clearly sees who Traitor Trump and MAGA is.
  
  Jimmy Carter Says He Sees Trump As An Illegitimate President : NPR
  
  “As in other studies, the ADAMS analysis showed that the prevalence of dementia increases significantly with age. Five percent of people ages 71 to 79, 24.2 percent of people 80 to 89, and 37.4 percent of those 90 years or older were estimated to have some type of dementia.”
  
  Key words: some type of dementia.
  
  And Biden doesn’t have any of those signs. Traitor Trump does.
  
  Still, Biden is in his 80s. I’m almost there, too.
  
  How the Aging Brain Affects Thinking | National Institute on Aging (nih.gov)
  
  Everyone has two ages: one based on a birthdate, but the one that counts is biological.
  
  How old is Biden based on his lifestyle choices — the biological age?
  
  “Overall, the medical records and/or public
  ly available information suggest that Biden
  maintains an edge over Trump in terms of
  his chances of surviving, and surviving
  healthfully, over the next four years—in
  spite of the fact that Biden is three years
  older than Trump. However, both Biden
  and Trump are expected to survive the next
  presidential term with their mental and
  physical functioning intact.”
  
  presidential_lifespan_and_healthspan-draft_for_release_1.pdf (icaa.cc)
  
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  - Jack Safely says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 5:08 pm
    
    Mr. Lofthouse,
    
    You have made clear long before today that you are a crackpot with mental health issues. Your love affair with Maoist China is just the most extreme example.
    
    You show your nuttiness again with your absurd accusation that I am a Trump troll. In my first comment I included a long passage showing how inarticulate Trump is, how he speaks at such a juvenile level. A Trump troll posts a comment like I did? You and the NYC lady are total nutcases.
    
    In any case, I’m back to work full-time starting tomorrow, so I’m going offline, away from the fever swamps on both the Left and the Right.
    
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  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 5:42 pm
    
    Jack, you’ve proven yourself to be a pro-Trump troll. There is certainly valid criticisms to be made of Biden, but your comments are like some MAGA Trump fever dream.
    
    When you said to Lloyd Lofthouse: “Your love affair with Maoist China is just the most extreme example.”, you made it clear for all the doubters that you are simply here to troll. You can’t change that now, so better leave and find a new identify.
    
    I view your hatred of me as a badge of honor. If there is someone on this blog whose views you respect, please do tell us who it is! I doubt they will thank you!
    
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  - Jack Safely says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 6:48 pm
    
    A few years ago – long before I ever first commented on this blog – Mr. Lofthouse posted several comments lauding Maoist China. That stuck in my memory.
    
    I understand the rules of this blog now. No matter how strongly someone criticizes Donald Trump – I have done so today and many times before – noting any shortcomings in Joe Biden makes that person a Trump troll. It’s just like a conservative blog where I’ve posted some anti-Trump comments: commenters there called me a Biden troll. I don’t know who I am any more.
    
    Some parting advice for this blog’s host that I intend to be cordial. You can be a serious historian or you can be a blind partisan; you can’t be both at the same time. Let’s all hope that Trump never again becomes President.
    
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 9:53 pm
    
    Jack,
    
    As a historian who loves my country and has a strong commitment to telling the truth, no matter who is offended, I judge Trump to be an ignorant fool who hopes to rule as a fascist.
    
    I am not alone among scholars. Michael Beschloss, a respected historian of the presidency, is in the same boat. So is Timothy Snyder of Yale, a revered historian at Yale. Add Heather Cox Richardson, another respected historian. And Laurence Tribe, revered constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School. I’m sure there are dozens, scores, hundreds, thousands of established scholars who find the thought of Trump getting back into the White House to be a frightening thought.
    
    Surely there were scholars in Germany in the 1930s who saw the danger of Hitler. They became extremely partisan in their opposition. They did not have to choose between being partisan and being a real historian. Their knowledge made them partisan. If they were wise enough to leave the country, they survived. If not, they did not.
    
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  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    March 12, 2024 at 7:30 pm
    
    Jack,
    
    The rule I follow is to tell the truth. You might want to try it.
    
    You offered no credible criticisms of Biden, but you smeared both Biden and Kamala Harris. Then you attacked Lloyd, me, and Diane Ravitch herself.
    
    Your rationale for writing “Your love affair with Maoist China is just the most extreme example” about Lloyd is weak, but if that is the kind of “evidence” that informs your certainty about your opinions, then that’s good for all of us to know.
    
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Joe Jersey says:

March 12, 2024 at 7:28 pm

Amazing how these Jack Safely comments are so similar to recent comments by other trolls, to wit: that the people here are partisans and ideologues, that Biden is an enfeebled criminal and how much they hate Trump. They seem to be reading from the same canned script.

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- NYC public school parent says:
  
  March 12, 2024 at 7:31 pm
  
  yep!
  
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- dianeravitch says:
  
  March 12, 2024 at 9:43 pm
  
  Good point, Joe J. You got the script right.
  
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- Joel says:
  
  March 13, 2024 at 7:09 am
  
  After they taught them English at the GRU.
  
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leftcoastteacher31224 says:

March 12, 2024 at 8:13 pm

Upon reading the post and comments, I have two things to say. First, while the media keeps insisting that most Americans do not want to see a rematch of Biden v Trump, Americans keep voting in the primaries for a rematch of Biden v Trump. Obviously, they are both the candidates voters most want. Both are U.S. presidents. Both are worthy of a modicum of respect.

Second, as a proud liberal, after the State of the Union Address, I can’t wait to see the debates right before Election Day. If President Biden can get a word in edgewise, he will mop the floor with policies against Trump’s reality TV style personal attacks. Trump hasn’t engaged in any debates this year. He’s hiding something. I’d like to see President Biden immediately call out President Trump to engage in the debates and keep hammering it all the way home. After the State of the Union, I think it will be clear in debate who the more mentally enfeebled candidate is when challenged to respond to questions with annunciation and pronunciation.

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Marc says:

March 13, 2024 at 4:53 am

What scares me is that Trump’s venomous speech has taken on a life of its own , and Trump does not need to elucidate it , as it has taken on a momentum all its own .
What happened to the veracity uttered by former Senator Moynihan who emphatically , but wit certitude stated “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions , but not to their own set of facts ?”

Marc

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