The Great Biden Distraction

[honorentheos]

To be fair I didn't compile it. The link to the original is in the first post.

[Gunnar]

To be fair I didn't compile it. The link to the original is in the first post.

Still, thanks for pointing it out to us.

[Gunnar]

Trump Stooges UNABLE To Speak After BEING Caught Lying to CONGRESS!

The Republicans don't even try to speak out to defend this bill, as they know how indefensible it is. As if depriving millions of Americans from affordable healthcare and further impoverishing the poorest of the poor, it also includes eliminating all restrictions on gun silencers and repressors, putting us all at even greater danger of mass murders than we already are at the behest of evil, wealthy NRA and gun lobby donors! Absolutely shameful! I hope the Senate Republicans will show enough spine to halt this travesty!

It is impossible for them to credibly deny they have seriously and treasonously betrayed their oath of office to defend our nation and constitution.

[Markk]

To be fair I didn't compile it. The link to the original is in the first post.

He cut and pasted it without knowing who wrote it and certainly did not vet it, as you just did, and both of you, along with Jersey Girl assume it is an accurate article. Maybe it is, it will take a months to vet, but in a very quick drive by I saw a few things that are just spun talking points.

Here is one.....

SECURING OUR BORDER

From his first day in office, President Biden called on Congress to secure the border and address the country's broken immigration system. Over four years, while congressional Republicans failed to act, President Biden and Vice President Harris took action, including by deploying the most agents and officers ever to secure the Southern border, seizing record levels of illicit fentanyl at ports of entry, expanding and creating lawful pathways for those seeking to come to the United States, bringing together world leaders under the Los Angeles Declaration to jointly address irregular migration, and implementing new policies and procedures to make America's immigration system more fair and more just.

No one knows how many illegal immigrants came over under Biden, millions, unchecked and unvetted. That statement is just 100% BS. Trump shut the border down in weeks, without congress. He basically stopped human trafficking by the cartels, partly using leverage of tariff to force Mexico and Canada to secure their side of the border. That is a fact that i doubt you will find on the website Honor cut and pasted from.

There is more on this (securing the border) and if anyone wants, we can go through it item by item, but the bottom line is this article by an unknown author states- "...President Biden and Vice President Harris took action, including by deploying the most agents and officers ever to secure the Southern border, ..." If anyone wants to argue that the border was secure or even intended to be secured, please do.

[honorentheos]

You may be surprised to learn I pay some attention to politics, and have for quite some time. So reading through that summary I felt pretty confident that the information was factual because not only did I recognize what it was referring to in most cases, but I also could see how it was often technically correct while phrasing things in a favorable way. I gave you the example upthread of the Child Tax Credit so you could see this for yourself. That doesn't mean I think it is deceptive. I tend to the view that reality is complex and therefore any attempt to describe reality by definition includes editorial choices. Sophisticated consumers of information know this and employ critical thinking skills to use that knowledge to understand the purpose behind those editorial choices as well as fill more of the information needed to understand the subject better in its more complicated form. But given we all rely on organic computational power evolved for survival in a more literal sense and not minds evolved for truth seeking, it's inevitable that there will be flaws.

I say all that to assure you, Markk, I have no concerns about the authorship nor the content of what i shared while knowing you will certainly be able to find ways to satisfy the "Must I Believe This?" confirmation bias you are already demonstrating.

[honorentheos]

Anyway, regarding the section on border security, here it is again with additional references for your vetting. Enjoy.

SECURING OUR BORDER

(honorentheos' editorial note: This is a summary heading that provides context for the more specific actions that are described under it, which you chose to quote. It is, by nature of being a summary heading, not relying on details evidence. That evidence is supplied under in in the bullet points that followed.)

From his first day in office, President Biden called on Congress to secure the border and address the country's broken immigration system. Over four years, while congressional Republicans failed to act, President Biden and Vice President Harris took action, including by deploying the most agents and officers ever to secure the Southern border, seizing record levels of illicit fentanyl at ports of entry, expanding and creating lawful pathways for those seeking to come to the United States, bringing together world leaders under the Los Angeles Declaration to jointly address irregular migration, and implementing new policies and procedures to make America's immigration system more fair and more just.

Legislative Action

On Day One, President Biden delivered a comprehensive immigration reform package to Congress that included:

- Historic investments in border technology and security.
- Expanded lawful pathways for those seeking to come to the United States.
- A process for Dreamers and farmworkers to seek legal permanent residence in the United States.

reference: https://www.vox.com/22233711/biden-day- ... itizenship

This was legislative direction sent to Congress on Biden's first day in office. It was met with opposition in the Senate and failed to advance. So the Biden administration then followed it with executive actions, discussed later.

In early 2024, the President reached a historic bipartisan agreement with Senate Democrats and Republicans to deliver the most consequential reforms to America's immigration laws in decades. This agreement would have:

- Added thousands of critical border and immigration personnel.
- Invested in cutting-edge technology to detect and intercept illegal fentanyl.
- Delivered sweeping reforms to the asylum system.
- Provided emergency authority for the President to shut down the border when the system becomes overwhelmed.
- Despite a bipartisan deal on this border package, congressional Republicans twice voted against the toughest and fairest set of immigration reforms in decades.

reference: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congre ... rcna136602

You may recall this happening before the election in 2024 where a bipartisan bill was moving forward until Trump told Republican lawmakers that border security was too important of an election issue to give Biden a win so they killed it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congre ... rcna137477

In other words, immigration is a political volleyball to Republicans. It's not about people being impacted or they would have passed the legislation many of them helped draft and supported.

So, while the two items above are both examples of what could have been, we move now to the executive actions he used to enact policy since congressional Republicans turned out to not be serious about immigration but only wanted to use it to manipulate gullible people. Thank goodness we don't know anyone like that, for sure.

Executive Action to Secure the Border

Given continued congressional inaction, the Biden-Harris Administration took additional executive action to secure the border:

President Biden issued a proclamation on Securing the Border under Immigration and Nationality Act sections 212(f) and 215(a), suspending the entry of noncitizens who cross the Southern border into the United States unlawfully. This proclamation was accompanied by a rule from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security restricting these noncitizens' eligibility for asylum.

These actions, which are in effect when migration levels are high, were designed to make it easier for immigration officers to quickly remove individuals who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States. The new procedures include humanitarian exceptions to protect those who are truly in need of protection, including unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking.

Since President Biden announced these executive actions, illegal border crossings have dropped by over 60% and reached the lowest point since July 2020—well before President Biden took office.
reference: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/26/nx-s1-50 ... ve-actions

The Biden-Harris Administration additional key actions to secure the border:

- Published a rule to ensure that migrants who pose a public safety or national security risk are removed as quickly in the process as possible rather than remaining in prolonged, costly detention systems for migrants who attempt to cross the border unlawfully.

- Launched a Recent Arrivals docket to more quickly resolve cases in the immigration court system, helping to reduce a backlog of immigration cases.

- Added prosecutors and support staff to increase immigration-related prosecutions in crucial border region U.S. Attorney's Offices.

- Dismantled smuggling networks through the creation and significant expansion of the FBI's Joint Taskforce Alpha, which led to over 300 domestic and international arrests, over 240 convictions in the United States, and the first ever extraditions from Guatemala to the United States on human smuggling resulting in death charges.

- Imposed visa restrictions on executives of transportation companies who profit from smuggling migrants by sea, and imposed visa restrictions on hundreds of individuals for selling transit visas to migrants who ultimately make their way to the Southern border.

- Operated more repatriation flights per week than ever before, enabling the Department of Homeland Security to repatriate more people in FY 2024 than any year since FY 2010.

- Ensured that fentanyl was not pouring into the country by seizing more fentanyl at ports of entry in two years than the past five years combined, and added 40 drug detection machines across ports of entry to disrupt fentanyl smuggling.

reference: https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/0 ... nd-support

Executive Action to Improve the Immigration System

The Biden-Harris Administration also took key steps to make America's immigration system more fair and more just.

- Preserved and fortified Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) by codifying the 2012 policy in DHS regulations and vigorously defended it against court challenges.

- Took action to ensure that individuals, including DACA recipients and other Dreamers, who have earned degrees at U.S. institutions of higher education and who have an offer of employment from a U.S. employer in a field related to their degree can quickly receive work visas.

- Rebuilt, strengthened, and modernized the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, successfully resettling more than 100,000 refugees in the United States in 2024—including a new record for refugees from the Western Hemisphere.

- Established new lawful pathways for those from countries suffering humanitarian crises.

- Extended, designated, or re-designated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for numerous populations, protecting hundreds of thousands of individuals from being returned to dangerous conditions in their countries of origin.

- Significantly enhanced U.S. companies' ability to fill job vacancies in critical fields and in seasonal industries by publishing rules that modernized and strengthened the integrity of the H-1B program for high skilled workers and the H-Second Amendment agricultural workers and H-2B non-agricultural workers programs.

References:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigratio ... -migrants/
https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/ ... serve-daca
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCP ... 100064.pdf

[honorentheos]

Since Trump is giving the global economy cardiac arrest through irrational and arbitrary tariff policies that primarily serve his own grifting, it may be worth considering yet again how the Biden administration made remarkable progress in reshoring and investing in domestic manufacturing:

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index ... nistration
Under President Biden the U.S. has added 696,000 manufacturing jobs across the country and in key supply-chain industries

The U.S. has added 696,000 manufacturing jobs in the 20 months since President Biden came into office. Notably, almost every congressional district and almost every state added manufacturing jobs during this period. By comparison, in the 20 months preceding the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. added just 92,000 manufacturing jobs and 13 states lost manufacturing jobs.

Key supply-chain sectors, which are critical for domestic production and manufacturing, have also seen strong job gains. Employment in transportation and warehousing has more than fully recovered from the coronavirus recession: There are now 734,000 more jobs in this sector than in February 2020. The construction sector has also regained more than all the jobs lost during the pandemic, with 95,000 more people employed in September 2022 than in February 2020.While supply-chain disruptions continue to contribute to elevated inflation, several measures of supply-chain pressures have begun to ease in recent months.

Major companies have recently announced significant investments in American manufacturing, including massive new semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Increasing U.S. production of semiconductors is particularly important because they are essential for a wide variety of products, including cars and trucks, smart phones and medical devices like hearing aids and pacemakers. In Ohio, Intel is investing $20 billion to build one of the largest semiconductor facilities in the world, expected to create 10,000 jobs, and Micron announced a $40 billion investment to significantly increase U.S. market share of memory chips. Firms are expanding their operations despite economic headwinds, and the CHIPS and Science Act will further support domestic semiconductor production and innovation.

Manufacturing jobs are a pathway to the middle class for American families, but the U.S. had previously experienced a decades-long decline in manufacturing

Manufacturing jobs have traditionally provided secure, high-paying jobs for workers without a college degree. Manufacturing jobs often provide better pay, more consistent hours and stronger worker protections than retail or other service industries. The loss of high-quality manufacturing jobs was a major reason the median income of working-class men fell by 20% between 1990 and 2013. Congress and President Biden have prioritized rebuilding America’s manufacturing base to create good-paying jobs and bring supply chains back to the U.S.

Decades of outsourcing have eroded domestic manufacturing jobs and made the U.S. reliant on imports for many manufactured goods. Manufacturing has long been a core strength of the American economy, but increasing global competition has threatened many of these high-quality jobs. In the two decades before the pandemic, the United States lost more than a quarter of all domestic manufacturing jobs, a decline of about 4.5 million. Increased competition from China led to an estimated 985,000 American manufacturing jobs lost between 1999 and 2011. Nationwide growth in manufacturing has reversed this trend, and the U.S. has added 696,000 manufacturing jobs since President Biden came into office.

Investments made by Congress and the Biden administration in manufacturing and domestic production are fueling manufacturing job growth, reversing decades of decline

Historic investments in domestic manufacturing and cutting-edge technology provided by the CHIPS and Science Act will spur innovation and support new jobs. Investments made by the CHIPS and Science Act in semiconductor production, which total over $50 billion, could lead to 19 new advanced fabrication facilities in the U.S. over a decade and create new jobs in in manufacturing, construction and technology. Specifically, the CHIPS and Science Act invests $39 billion to bring essential semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. and $13 billion to develop and produce cutting-edge semiconductors domestically. It also provides support for programs that help American manufacturers stay competitive and authorizes an additional $174 billion investment in research and innovation.

Through targeted tax credits, the Inflation Reduction Act incentivizes domestic clean energy manufacturing, creating jobs and helping reduce energy costs. The Inflation Reduction Act will help spur growth in clean energy manufacturing through tax credits for clean technologies, such as wind, solar and battery components manufactured in the U.S. It also incentivizes the next generation of clean energy innovation by doubling the research and development tax credit for small businesses. Moody’s Analytics estimates the Act will save an average household $300 each year on their energy bills.

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is funding infrastructure investments that will create jobs and help American businesses thrive. By investing $550 billion in new spending on essential infrastructure, the bipartisan Infrastructure Act reverses years of inadequate federal investment in critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, rail, broadband, airports, cargo ports and water pipelines. Investing in U.S. infrastructure will reduce costs for businesses, facilitate domestic commerce and create jobs. American manufacturers will get the benefit of more efficient, cost-effective and reliable supply chains thanks to new and improved U.S. infrastructure.

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Fi ... 1853941231

And for a comparison of Trump's first term vs. the Biden administration's record on manufacturing:
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/Trump ... facturing/

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris each claim they helped to revive American manufacturing and that the other has hurt it. And they both select cherry-picked data points to underscore their arguments.

The reality is that the manufacturing report cards for the Trump and Biden administrations are mixed. We’ll sort through some of the spin coming from both camps.

Here’s Trump’s version, from a rally last month in Pennsylvania:

Trump, Aug. 19: Together, we will reclaim our nation’s destiny as the No. 1 manufacturing superpower in the world. … We had that going at a level that nobody had seen before. … Some facts that are interesting. The year before I took office, the United States lost over 10,000 manufacturing jobs. Everybody said you’d never bring it back. But under my leadership, we created more than a half a million manufacturing jobs in less than three years. … And under Kamala, we have fallen into manufacturing recession with 13,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the United States since just the start of this year.

And here’s Harris’ version, from a campaign event in North Carolina just days before President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race:

Harris, July 18: Donald Trump tries to claim he brought back American manufacturing. The fact is, under Donald Trump, America lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. … Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and I have created nearly 800,000 new manufacturing jobs — so much so, it’s been described as a “manufacturing boom.”

Other Democrats have also weighed in.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on the first night of the Democratic convention, said, “Trump talked big about bringing back manufacturing jobs, but you know who actually did it? President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”

And Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg leveled this claim about Trump’s record during a July 28 interview on Fox News: “Even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing recession.”

Both sides were measuring the state of U.S. manufacturing in terms of jobs. There are other measurements, such as productivity, real output and wages relative to nonmanufacturing jobs. But since both sides mentioned jobs, let’s start there, with the data supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Manufacturing Jobs Under Trump
Trump came into office in January 2017 on the heels of what Forbes called an “industrial mini-recession in 2015 through much of 2016.” Trump rightly noted that there was a loss of manufacturing jobs in the year before he took office. There was a loss of 7,000 manufacturing jobs in 2016, measuring from December 2015 to December 2016. (Trump rounded up to 10,000 jobs.)

However, Trump didn’t mention that the number of manufacturing jobs had been steadily increasing for nearly six years prior to leveling off in 2016 — rising by more than 900,000 jobs after the Great Recession. The manufacturing jobs lost in the Great Recession have still not been recovered.

In Trump’s first two years, the economy added 462,000 manufacturing jobs. But that growth leveled off in 2019. In fact, for the full year in 2019 — before the pandemic-fueled recession hit — there was a loss of 43,000 manufacturing jobs. That’s what Buttigieg was referring to when he said that “even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing recession.”

The effects of the pandemic, of course, resulted in major jobs loss, including nearly 1.4 million in the manufacturing sector between January and April of 2020. About 770,000 of those manufacturing jobs had returned before Trump left office. But the combined job losses in 2019 and 2020 resulted in a net loss of 188,000 manufacturing jobs at the end of Trump’s presidency.

Manufacturing Jobs Under Biden
When Biden took office, manufacturing jobs continued to ride the post-pandemic recovery bump. In Biden’s first two years in office, there was a gain of 754,000 manufacturing jobs. By mid-2022, there were more people employed in manufacturing than before the pandemic, according to the BLS.

As of July, the latest month of available data, the U.S. has added 765,000 manufacturing jobs under Biden. The manufacturing employment level in July is 173,000 more than the pre-pandemic figure in February 2020. (Those numbers may soon change in ways that will markedly change the Biden administration’s record. Preliminary estimates of annual revisions to the number of jobs created over the 12 months ending in March indicates that the BLS’ monthly estimates may have overshot manufacturing jobs by 115,000. Instead of a gain of 19,000 manufacturing jobs that year, revisions may put that at a 96,000 job loss.)

But as was the case under Trump, the rise in manufacturing jobs stalled in Biden’s third year in office. Between January 2023 and July 2024 — the latest data available — there has been a gain of just 11,000 manufacturing jobs. And from January through July of this year, as Trump said, there has been a loss of 13,000 manufacturing jobs. (And it will likely be more than that after the BLS issues its final revisions in February.)

In other words, the trend under both Presidents Trump and Biden followed a similar pattern: two years of growth after an economic downturn, followed by job losses in the third year.

Comparing the raw numbers, Biden has seen an average monthly increase of 18,200 manufacturing jobs per month, compared to 11,600 per month pre-pandemic under Trump. (And again, revisions are likely to lower Biden’s average monthly gain, though it would still be higher than under Trump.)

Other Measures of Manufacturing
There are, of course, other ways to measure the health of the manufacturing sector in the U.S.

“It’s a bit tricky to talk about manufacturing because we’ve seen such different trends in employment versus output,” said George Washington University economic professor Tara Sinclair, pointing to a Pew Research Center report about the long-term trend of manufacturing output rising as jobs have disappeared.

“I usually use industrial production rather than employment to capture output,” Sinclair told us via email. “It’s true that industrial production started falling after peaking in September of 2018. There were gains from 2016 to 2018, but that was recovery from the much discussed manufacturing recession of 2015-2016.”

Under Biden, industrial production rose until the fall of 2022 and has remained relatively stagnant ever since, according to Federal Reserve data.

The trade deficit for manufactured goods has generally gone up under both presidents, Robert Atkinson, president of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told us via email. And manufacturing labor productivity growth “has been terrible under both administrations.”

A February 23, 2023, report from Ian Clay of ITIF noted that while the U.S. economy had added 830,000 manufacturing jobs in the first two years of the Biden administration, “Productivity (measured in real output per hour of labor) in the manufacturing sector is lower today than two years ago.”

Atkinson also noted that manufacturing job creation has lagged overall job creation. According to the BLS, under Biden, the growth of manufacturing jobs (6.28%) has been slower than overall job growth (11.06%). The same was true under Trump, even when looking only at his first three pre-COVID-19 years, when manufacturing job growth (3.39%) lagged overall job growth (4.4%).

“Neither administration did particularly well there,” Atkinson said. “Also, the manufacturing wage premium over non-manufacturing jobs has been steadily falling.”

A 2022 Federal Reserve paper that explored the reason for differences in wages between manufacturing and other sectors found that “the manufacturing wage premium—the additional pay a manufacturing worker earns relative to a comparable nonmanufacturing worker—disappeared in recent years.”

“So overall, neither party should claim any credit regarding manufacturing,” Atkinson said.

Alan Tonelson, a longtime analyst of U.S. manufacturing policy who blogs at RealityChek, told us different measures of the health of manufacturing present different pictures.

“Both administrations have taken important steps in building the policy infrastructure needed for a significant U.S. manufacturing comeback,” Tonelson told us, though through different strategies: Trump via tariffs and deregulation and Biden via government incentives.

Under Biden, there have been significant investments in factory-building. The Inflation Reduction Act included tens of billions for clean energy development, and the CHIPS Act provided $39 billion to fund manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and $11 billion for semiconductor research and development.

Indeed, Bureau of Economic Analysis data show private investment in manufacturing is way up under Biden, rising about 90% since the fourth quarter of 2022. But it may take years for those investments to show up in manufacturing job data.

“There is certainly a lag of some time,” Tonelson said. “It takes time to build factory structures, to get in all kinds of necessary equipment and then to hire workers.”

Ultimately, he said, “we’ll have to see what the actual level of demand for these products is.” For example, he said, the demand for electric vehicles is not as hot as once expected. And whether the semiconductors built in the U.S. will be able to compete with those manufactured in Taiwan remains to be seen.

“There are so many things in flux right now,” Tonelson said, such as the lingering effects of the pandemic, “It’s difficult to assess the health of manufacturing.”

“We will have to wait quite a while longer before we see the full effect,” of things such as Trump’s tariffs, the investments under Biden and the pandemic, Tonelson said.

[honorentheos]

Speaking of the distraction from what Trump is doing, since that is the topic of this thread, consider:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... ngNewsSerp

More than 800,000 jobs at stake from Trump tax cut

A recent legislative proposal has sparked concerns over its potential impact on the U.S. job market. The tax bill, championed by President Donald Trump and supported by the Republican majority, aims to eliminate clean energy tax credits. Experts warn that this could lead to the loss of over 830,000 jobs in the coming years. The sectors most at risk include construction and manufacturing, particularly in emerging industries tied to the energy transition, such as electric vehicles and renewable technologies.

The potential job losses are particularly significant given that nearly 80% of private investments spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) have been directed to areas controlled by Republican lawmakers. This is according to a joint analysis by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These investments are now at risk due to the removal of incentives that were crucial for their financial viability.

States like Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas are among the most affected, with established production centers for electric vehicles and batteries. In Nevada's Mark Amodei district, projections indicated over 20,000 new jobs related to lithium mining and processing. However, Amodei supported the bill that could now dismantle these plans, highlighting the potential regional economic impact.

Existing manufacturing facilities could also face challenges, as the new legislation proposes revoking previously approved tax credits. This raises questions about the continuity of projects that had secured funding based on the incentives provided by the IRA. The uncertainty surrounding these projects could have far-reaching implications for the industry.

Beyond employment, the legislation could also lead to increased energy costs for consumers and businesses. Energy Innovation estimates that wholesale electricity prices could rise by up to 50% by 2035 due to the reduction in solar and wind projects, which are typically more cost-effective than fossil fuels. This potential increase in energy costs could have a significant impact on the economy.

Industry organizations, such as the Solar Energy Industries Association, warn that this legislative shift not only jeopardizes jobs and investments but also threatens the country's energy competitiveness against global powers like China. The potential consequences of this policy change could be far-reaching and long-lasting.

“Solar energy is the most effective and economical form of future energy,” stated Zaid Ashai, CEO of Nexamp. “Abandoning it is abandoning energy independence and technological competitiveness.”

The future of U.S. energy sector employment, as well as the cost millions of households will pay for electricity, may now rest in the hands of the Senate, which must decide whether to ratify or block the initiative.

This is an example of how the Trump administration is undoing the work of the Biden administration that was serving the people of the United States regardless of political affiliation. And instead, it is working to benefit the wealthy economically while placating the masses with cruel, Constitution-undermining executive actions that target "others" as a distraction.

[Doctor Scratch]

He cut and pasted it without knowing who wrote it

It's pretty easy to figure out who wrote it: in fact, it states this information as plain as day.

[honorentheos]

Markk is just looking for the fastest way to satisfy his "Must I Believe This?" bias. He not only can't accept the Biden administration had a meaningfully positive effect on America, he can't allow any positives to stand because it undermines the idea the Biden administration was an abysmal failure. Dismissal is essential, and the least amount of effort to do so the better for his purposes.

It's more or less the Daniel Peterson defense against the CES Letter.