How much is Biden like Trump?
I can’t imagine Joe Biden summoning his followers to “take over” the Capitol, or insisting on proclaiming electoral fraud in the “cradle of democracy.”
However, in the time that has elapsed since he took office until today, he has frequently identified with Donald Trump’s political actions and, at the very least, he uses the strategy of inertia to avoid changing what was established by his predecessor.
Being a Republican, in the case of Donald Trump, or a Democrat, in the case of Joe Biden, does not at all ensure, within the concept of American “democracy”, that there are differences when it comes to implementing policies.
Not to be surprised, but Biden was “a different person” when he was only serving as Vice President, in Barack Obama’s time. Now, as president, it is valid to ask how much he is like Trump.
A few examples may help us with the answer.
Trump, with his unpresidential style, invented and signed 243 new sanctions against Cuba, which were added to the ones announces during the more than 60 years of blockade. During his electoral campaign, Biden said -and said again- that he would eliminate such measures. Howerver, in almost a year and a half of his tenure in the White House, he has maintained the legislation and has mocked -as Trump did- the UN resolutions, the appeals of world leaders and the claims of Americans and other personalities of the planet, who demand an end to such criminal actions.
Biden allowed himself to be trapped by the group of extreme right-wing and counterrevolutionaries of Cuban origin based in Florida, who took control of the Cuba issue during the Trump era and decide -always against the Cuban people- the line of action of the State Department and the Presidency.
Another coincidence in the way of acting: when Trump decided to build a high metal fence in the border with Mexico, the international community compared the fact with a kind of apartheid. Biden assured in his campaign that he would stop such construction and dismantle what was already fenced. What has happened? The wall has not been dismantled, rather areas that are considered less secure are being repaired to stop immigration.
An unusual fact: Donald Tump abruptly destroyed and threw in the trash the documents supporting the Iran Nuclear Deal; an arbitrary and dangerous decision condemned everywhere in the world. Trump was putting humanity at risk, his critics claimed. Biden, more tenuously, also opposed the Republican’s actions.
The Democrat, in his first attempts to reverse such a situation, spoke several times of “returning to the Nuclear Agreement” with the Persian nation. But, once again, the inaction of the current ruler has thrown away his commitments, and he continues to bet on sanctions against Teheran and not on the renewal of the Agreement.
U.S. specialists say that in critical areas, the Biden administration has not made major changes, which shows how difficult it is to chart new courses in foreign policy in Washington. This was evident in the President’s tour of Israel and Saudi Arabia, aimed, in part, at further strengthening ties with those states.
In this regard, Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, said that over time, Biden has failed to deliver on many of his campaign promises and has maintained the status quo in the Middle East and Asia.
Meanwhile, Stephen Biegun, former Undersecretary of State, has said that there is a great force of gravity that takes policies to the same place. It’s still the same problems. It’s still the same world. They still have the same tools to influence each other, in order to get to the same results, and it’s still the same United States.