MIKE ROSEN: Obama’s third term as president ends with a gasp and wheeze.
The obstacles and landmines Biden planted in his successor’s policy path will be easily cleared by President Trump, as he amply demonstrated just hours after the inauguration with a tsunami of executive orders overriding all of Biden’s, on which the ink had barely dried. Clearly, Biden’s deteriorating state of mind could not have crafted the intricate obstructions pouring out of the oval office in the final days of his presidency.
Instead, the fingerprints of White House staff were all over them. USA Today calculated that three quarters of Biden’s top 100 advisors had worked for Obama. The open secret in Democrat DC circles was that Biden didn’t matter. He may have had the title of president, but Obama-era young radical aides were really running the country. (And those whiz kids must have had a hearty laugh inserting America-hating left-wing billionaire George Soros among Biden’s picks for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)
Biden was the figurehead for the equivalent of Obama’s third term, who had promised to “fundamentally transform America.” NPR reported that 12 of Biden’s first 16 senior appointments were Obama alumni. Biden was a puppet whose ego was flattered by handlers portraying him as the new FDR who would create his own “social justice” New Deal (including a Green New Deal), expanding the administrative state, driving up social spending, opening the border, and codifying the Left’s cultural agenda. Rather than bringing spending sharply down from the hyper-elevated COVID levels, they pretended endless deficits don’t matter and don’t ignite inflation. Turns out, they do.
What matters just as much is derailing the federal gravy train that props up Democrats and their causes far beyond any genuine popularity — but the DOGE boys are on it.