Joe Biden left the White House nearly a month ago, but he’s never far from Donald Trump’s mind.
The former president has been a recurring punchline – and punching bag – in nearly every appearance Trump has made since returning to power. With Republicans in full control of Washington, Trump is forever in search of a foil and Biden tops the list.
“Much of this stuff is because of Biden,” Trump said last week in the Oval Office, referring to federal employees being allowed to telework. “It’s his fault.”
For Trump, the buck stops with Biden – not with him. It’s a new wrinkle to the sign that sat on Harry Truman’s desk, “The Buck Stops Here,” a phrase has been a guiding principle of most presidents ever since.
The list of challenges that Trump and his team have blamed on Biden is long: the high price of eggs, the crash of an airliner in the Potomac River, mishandled disaster relief from FEMA, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the proliferation of terrorists in Somalia, expanding US trade deficits, a deterioration of relations with Beijing.
“I think Biden is incompetent,” Trump said, calling out his predecessor eight times on Thursday as he blamed him for the Russia-Ukraine war. “I think when he said that they could join NATO, I thought that was a very stupid thing to say.”
Trump’s favorite contrast
While the problems of every presidency are inextricably linked, Biden’s holds an unusual place in history, with his administration sandwiched between Trump’s first and second terms. When Biden took office, he made a point of not mentioning Trump by name, a practice that he dropped as time wore on.
For years, Biden has occupied a singular place in Trump’s mind, aides say, a forever rival whom he never defeated at the ballot box. Trump revels in using Biden as a metaphor for a stark contrast in style and substance.
As Trump settles into his routine of signing executive actions, while fielding a wide range of questions from reporters nearly every day, he called out his predecessor dozens of times last week over Ukraine, illegal immigration and his distaste for paper straws.
“This was all led by Biden and the group of stupid people,” Trump said, blasting Biden’s border policies. He soon moved onto US aid to Ukraine, saying: “Biden gives it because he’s not a smart individual.”
Never mind that Trump made history and became the 47th president by defeating Kamala Harris. He seldom mentions her by name, even as he frequently ticks through the battleground states he carried and the popular vote he won in November.
Instead, Trump returns to the Biden well again and again.
“We’ve done more in two weeks than Biden’s done in five, six years,” Trump declared one afternoon as he sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, where Biden – who was president for four years – left a message to wish his successor well, writing: “May God bless you and guide you.”
Seldom has a day gone by since Trump’s return to power that he has not invoked Biden’s name – belittling, blaming, badmouthing – over his domestic agenda, foreign policy and more.
At most every turn, Trump points out his former rival’s age (Biden is 82, Trump is 78) and questions his mental acuity, which Trump did again when he said he was revoking Biden’s security clearance and access to daily intelligence briefings.
That decision, which Trump revealed while flying to Mar-a-Lago last weekend, came exactly four years after Biden made the same move against Trump, citing his “erratic behavior” before and after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
“Joe, you’re fired,” Trump said in a message on social media, announcing the move. He ended with his signature slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Biden stays quiet
For his part, Biden has settled into his post-presidency life back in Delaware.
He has occasionally spoken to longtime friends and allies about Trump, people familiar with the conversations say, often expressing a sense of dismay and astonishment at any given day’s whirlwind turn of events. If he accepts any blame for his role in Trump’s return, he has not said so, even in private.
Several former Biden advisers said they preferred not to speak openly about Trump’s frequent disparagements of their former boss. A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment.
Tim Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, said Trump’s obsession with Biden stands out in a long line of relationships from one American leader to the next.
“After having won the popular vote and enjoying much better approval ratings in his first few weeks, it’s remarkable that he cares,” said Naftali, who is also a CNN contributor. “He refers to President Biden more often than Democrats do.”
He added: “Talking about Biden is a way to mobilize his base and he just can’t get away from it.”
When Trump first became president eight years ago, he called out his vanquished rival, Hillary Clinton, over and over and adopted a similar attitude toward his then-predecessor Barack Obama, who departed office with a much higher approval rating than Biden. Their acrimony had dated back years, to when Trump falsely claimed Obama was born outside the United States.
At the time, the enmity was taken as a major breach in presidential history. Almost always, presidents of both parties have tried to at least maintain the appearance of collegiality with their predecessors, even when they secretly despised them and delivered any public critiques in subtler ways.
Not so with Trump, who wore his disdain on his sleeve. He accused Obama of surveilling him in Trump Tower, in addition to a wide array of other faults. He had little nice to say about his Republican predecessors, either, including George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, whom he accused of warmongering.
In Biden, Trump has a far less popular foil than he did with Obama.
The 46th president departed office with historically low approval ratings and was widely criticized, even by Democrats, for failing to step aside sooner to allow Harris or another nominee to mount a fulsome campaign to stop Trump.
Yet at one point, Trump seemed to have some sympathy for Biden’s predicament. He bemoaned what he described as an undignified and cruel process of shoving aside the president from the Democratic ticket.
“The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan,” he said a few weeks after Biden stepped aside.
The pleasantries continued during a meeting a week after the November election, when Trump and Biden met for nearly two hours to discuss a peaceful transition of power.
“It will be as smooth as it can get,” Trump said, “and I very much appreciate that, Joe.”
Yet that tone was short-lived.
While Trump stopped short of criticizing Biden by name during his inaugural address, even as he declared “America’s decline is over,” he didn’t wait long to do so. By the end of his first week in office, Biden had already become a recurring storyline in Trump’s speeches.
To a crowd of supporters at a rally in Las Vegas, Trump recounted conversations he said he had with foreign counterparts where he claimed, with no evidence, that some had tried to contact Biden, only to be told he was asleep.
“He’ll call you back in two months,” Trump claimed the foreign leaders were told, citing French President Emmanuel Macron as his source.
Where Trump has so far not ventured is launching a formal criminal investigation of Biden himself, though he did task his attorney general upon taking office to conduct far-reaching probes into the previous administration.
Based on comments Trump made shortly after entering office, an investigation into Biden may not be far off.
“I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees and I won, but I did it the hard way,” Trump told Fox News. “It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also. It is very hard to say that.”
Trump didn’t stop there, adding: “The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon.”
