Former U.S. president Donald Trump broke a lengthy silence this week – critiquing his successor Joe Biden’s performance during a CNN town hall meeting during which the new president made an erroneous claim about the coronavirus vaccine.
“I saw that he said there was no vaccine when he came into office, and yet he got a shot before he came into office,” Trump told Greg Kelly of Newsmax. “It was already in early November when we announced it, but we actually had it substantially before that. We were giving millions of shots and millions of doses.”
“So he’s either not telling a truth, or he’s mentally gone, one or the other,” Trump added.
The first vaccine doses were available on December 14, 2020. By the time Biden took office, more than one million doses were being administered per day.
“He’s getting killed on this,” Trump continued. “Even the haters said, ‘Well wait a minute, this vaccine was announced long before.’ Could he be joking? Because, frankly, that was a very dumb statement.”
Trump was not the only one to pan Biden’s town hall performance …
“Progressives” on the far left end of the Democratic ideological spectrum were also livid with Biden – who seemed insufficiently committed to their core agenda items of student loan forgiveness, defunding law enforcement and raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.
Biden’s blunt refusal to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt enraged the progressive left, especially after he claimed such a move was all about helping “people who have gone to Harvard and Yale.”
Socialist U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit the roof at that comparison …
“Very wealthy people already have a student loan forgiveness program. It’s called their parents,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “The idea that millionaires and billionaires are willingly letting their kids drown in federal student loans (and) that’s why we can’t go big on forgiveness is about as silly as it sounds.”
Biden has committed to forgiving up to $10,000 in debt via executive action – but claims he lacks the authority to go further.
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“I understand the impact of debt, and it can be debilitating,” Biden said during the town hall. “I am prepared to write off the $10,000 debt but not $50,000, because I don’t think I have the authority to do it.”
Is that true? Not according to liberal senators.
“The administration has broad authority to immediately deliver much-needed relief to millions of Americans,” U.S. Senate majority leader Charles Schumer and former 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren wrote in a letter urging Biden to “cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt” for federal borrowers.
Our founding editor Will Folks has argued for years that higher education in the United States should be completely privatized and that federal loan guarantees should be abolished – with student loans awarded based on what the market commands.
As for the minimum wage debate, one liberal congressman – Ro Khanna of California – drew a line in the sand for Biden.
“This is the first key decision on a real commitment to progressive values,” Khanna told The Los Angeles Times.
Biden was having none of it, though. While he pledged his support for a $15 minimum wage, he argued the policy change must be achieved “gradually” and that “it’s totally legitimate for small-business owners to be concerned about how that changes.”
It has long been argued that raising the minimum wage had a deleterious impact on employment – and early evidence from minimum wage hikes in urban city centers have borne out this concern.
“Raising the minimum wage has a number of serious and negative unintended consequences,” senior employment contributor Jack Kelly wrote recently for Forbes. “Employers, especially small family and midsize businesses, will be disproportionately hurt by the extra costs incurred. The local neighborhood stores and businesses with razor-thin profits will be forced to raise prices to make up for the addition labor costs. With the increased prices, customers may elect to take their business elsewhere. Losing customers means losing income, which could result in the business having to layoff workers.”
Biden also expressly rebuked defunding the police – a top priority of the far left.
While the ongoing civil war within the Republican party has been dominating headlines of late, this news outlet noted last month that Democrats have their own divisions to contend with – especially as the radical left keeps pushing policies that Biden and other ostensible “centrists” are politically uncomfortable endorsing.
Definitely a dynamic to keep a close eye on moving forward …
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