The title of this Washington Post article (paper edition) is: “At Fundraisers, Biden goes off script and tells it like it is.” The notion that the partisan remarks of this elderly, forgetful president of average intelligence represent the way things are is laughable, even coming from the Post.
The title of the Post’s piece in the online edition is: ”Party gatherings give a window into Biden’s mind, from nukes to Pelosi.” That title is accurate, but could use these additional words: “It isn’t pretty.”
What does Biden say that left-wing Post writer Matt Viser thinks constitutes the way “it is”? For one thing, Biden tells his audiences that Donald Trump and his followers are verging on “semi-fascism.”
This is hardly an original thought. One need not pay big bucks to hear a Democrat express it. Indeed, Biden has come close to saying this on-the-record.
But is the claim true? A threshold question might be whether Joe Biden knows enough about history and political theory to understand what fascism is. Answer: He does not (see below).
Another question is this: In Trump’s four years as president, what policies did he implement or attempt to implement that are fascist or “semi-fascist”?
I consider myself a critic of Trump, and certainly don’t support him for president in 2024. Yet, I can’t think of any fascist policy associated with his presidency.
Trump cut taxes. There’s nothing fascistic about that.
Trump tried to secure the border. Any government of any nature should want to prevent people from illegally entering the country, especially when the country is the target of foreign terrorists. Even Democrats profess, albeit insincerely, to desire this. The desire isn’t fascistic, and neither were Trump’s attempts to fulfill it, which always deferred to judicial restrictions.
Trump modestly cut back on federal regulation of business. By contrast, fascists typically seek to impose economic regimentation on society from the top down.
The covid pandemic presented a major crisis, one that, in my view, led to Trump’s defeat in 2020. Trump did not try to impose a centralized response. Instead, consistent with our (non-fascist) form of government, he left it largely to states and localities to decide how to cope. This is the opposite of what a fascist likely would do.
Fascists typically try to forcibly suppress political opponents. Trump didn’t do this.
Political opponents didn’t end up in jail. The more forceful and/or prominent ones ended up spreading lies about alleged collusion between Trump and Russia on lefty cable news shows and in newspapers (such as the Post).
None of the falsehoods was censored or suppressed. No one who spread them was held to account.
The rioting and looting that followed the death of George Floyd presented an opportunity for a leader with fascistic tendencies to impose a crackdown. Trump didn’t attempt this.
He did tried to clear the area near the White House so he could leave the premises, rather than be, in effect, a prisoner in his own residence. Any normal leader would have done that.
Trump lent his support to a measure that freed thousands of federal felons and reduced the length of sentences for some federal felonies. This was a very bad idea, in my view, but no one’s idea of fascism.
In the waning days of his presidency, Trump denied losing the election and called for peaceful protests against the outcome. This was reckless and worse than unfortunate in my view, but not the stuff of fascism.
I don’t doubt that a small number of Trump’s supporters would like to see Biden overthrown as president and replaced by a regime with some characteristics of fascism. But then, a small number of leftists would have liked to see Trump overthrown, if not assassinated, and replaced by a government prepared to oppress conservatives and impose far-left policies. And mainstream Democrats tried to nullify the Trump presidency with the baseless Russia collusion narrative.
In sum, Biden’s claim that Trump and his supporters are semi-fascists is useful only as further support for the proposition that the current president spouts partisan nonsense. This kind of name-calling is as reckless in its own way as the kind of stuff Trump tweets in his worst moments.
Biden has also told private audiences that the world faces the prospect of Armageddon thanks to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. I doubt this is true to any meaningful degree, but it’s impossible to say right now that Biden is wrong — only that he probably shouldn’t be making such statements.
But Biden was not content just to engage in scare talk. According to the Post, he also asked members of at least one of his audiences whether anyone would have thought, after the Cuban missile crisis, that a Russian leader would threaten to use nuclear weapons.
Well, yes. Most observers with a sense of history would have understood that, notwithstanding the resolution of the missile crisis, Russia was not permanently out of the nuclear intimidation business.
Indeed, during the 1970s, Russia stepped up its efforts in the nuclear arms race. Understanding the threat of “Armageddon,” Republican presidents sought arms control agreements and also, in Ronald Reagan’s case, the development of a nuclear defense system (ridiculed by Democrats as “Star Wars”).
The fall of the Soviet Union made it more difficult, though certainly not impossible, to imagine a Russian leader threatening to use nukes. We know that the Ukrainian leadership did not envisage such threats. That’s why Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, to its detriment.
Had Biden identified the early 90s as a time when few would have expected Russia to be talking about using nukes in the coming decades, his point wouldn’t have been ridiculous. By instead citing the Cuban missile crisis, Biden confirmed that he doesn’t know much about history.
There are reasons why rich Democrats might attend a fundraiser at which Joe Biden speaks. Party loyalty, the pursuit of favors, seeing and being seen, and the desire to be entertained come to mind.
But I doubt anyone comes to such an event hoping to learn from this declining , not-so-bright president.