Biden signs 17 executive actions, orders to reverse Trump policies
Fox News correspondent Doug Luzader reports on the latest.
Joe Biden has been president of the United States for just over twenty-four hours and the Biden doctrine is already coming into focus: say one thing and do another.
Biden’s overarching theme at Wednesday’s inaugural address was unity and rightly so. He won the presidency by just 43,000 votes in three key states, the U.S. Senate is split down the middle at 50-50, and Democrats have a razor-thin 221-211 majority in the U.S. House.
The 46th president’s speech contained all the right words that a divided nation needed to hear.
After all, focusing on unity is critically important to the health of our republic and for future generations. President Biden even went as far to say that the beautiful ideal of national unification is something that lies deep within him.
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Biden made it clear to the American people that bridging our divide is his focus when he stated, "on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause."
Powerful words for certain. But as Joe Biden spoke, the American people were learning about the incoming Biden administration’s first official acts.
The American people woke up to the news that President Biden would be signing 17 executive actions on his first day, many of which unilaterally stopped or reversed some of President Trump’s most effective signature America first policies.
If Biden wants to be a "Healer-In-Chief" he’ll have to have the courage to stand up to his liberal base; that’s just a fact.
This news was met with great disappointment by the 74 million Trump voters who thought Biden would practice was he was preaching about unity, at least for a day.
It wasn’t so.
The CNN headline "Biden targets Trump’s legacy with first day executive actions," was a complete contradiction to the president’s message in his inaugural address.
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Biden’s executive actions include stopping construction of the border wall, ending the travel ban for individuals seeking to enter the United States from terrorism hotbeds, reentering the Paris Climate Treaty, killing the Keystone Pipeline, and reversing President Trump’s policy of aggressive illegal immigration law enforcement.
These presidential actions all have one thing in common: they’re all designed to pander to Biden’s far-left base.
Think about it -- for tens of millions of Americans, building the border wall and stopping illegal immigration is the main reason they became supporters of President Trump in the first place. Ending construction of the wall on day one feels like a slap in the face.
A more prudent start for a president entering office in such heated times might have been to carefully consider whether these Trump policies were effective before ending them for cheap political points.
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Tens of millions of Americans believe that walls work because statistics show that they do; tens of millions of Americans believe that we’re a nation of laws and that illegal immigration laws should be enforced to keep American citizens safe; and tens of millions of Americans believe that stopping projects like the Keystone pipeline will kill American jobs and re-entering international treaties like the Paris Climate Accords de-prioritize the livelihood of the American worker.
Did President Biden consider any of this before deciding to move forward with his executive orders?
Biden’s partisan White House staff may feel good about spiking the football on the first day, but these actions might not be serving the new president very well.
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A White House truly interested in unity might have considered doing something bipartisan relating to COVID-19 in the Oval Office with congressional Republicans on the first day. Even a summit to discuss the executive orders would have been better than ramming them down the throats of 74 million Americans. It’s a move that reeks of a "my way or the highway" attitude.
Wednesday’s partisan executive orders were a missed opportunity. If Biden wants to be a "Healer-In-Chief" he’ll have to have the courage to stand up to his liberal base; that’s just a fact. But tomorrow’s another day.
President Biden could pick up the phone and tell Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that moving forward with a phony post-presidency impeachment circus will further divide our country.
Biden’s partisan White House staff may feel good about spiking the football on the first day, but these actions might not be serving the new president very well.
Moreover, a Senate vote attempting to block President Trump from running for president again in 2024 to avenge his loss to Joe Biden is a huge mistake.
President Biden and congressional leaders must not lose focus on what’s important. The number one priority must be doing everything and anything to end the coronavirus pandemic and get America back to normal as soon as humanly possible.
Getting sidetracked with the far left’s wish list or wasting time on the impeachment of a former president who’s already getting on with his life in Florida would be a failure in leadership.
President Trump gave his first address to Congress on February 28, 2017. That means Joe Biden is about five weeks away from his own first speech before a joint session of Congress.
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What will President Biden have to report in 40 days? Will America be reeling from impeachment and more partisanship or on our way to a post-COVID 2021?
I pray it’s the latter.
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