US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, again and again, presented a rosy picture of his economic successes but also acknowledged how President-elect Donald Trump’s Narcissism helped hoover up credit for COVID relief checks, which, in fact, people received through Congress.
During a speech at the Brookings Institution, Biden claimed that he was stupid not to do what Trump did when Biden was not the President in 2017-2021.
I signed into law the American Rescue Plan, the most major economic recovery package in history. It also helped me realise something about Donald Trump. He’s the one who would sign checks for people,” Biden said before quickly correcting himself and adding, “And I didn’t – silly.”
The US president, Donald Trump, directly signed $1,200 and $600 stimulus checks in 2020, while Biden’s $1,400 checks in 2021 didn’t bear his signature to cause any delays. Trump, however, according to a report aimed at having the checks with the name prominently displayed.
The money for the checks was mostly bipartisan and signed almost entirely by Democrats in Congress; most members of Congress from Trump’s Republicans voted no.
Biden later remarked on his comment as an apocalyptic joke and pointed out that Americans got through the COVID economic wreck through checks.
However, Biden failed to match Trump’s performance, as more people believed Trump was the stronger economic leader, and many voted for him because of the checks issued during his term.
Biden also had a message for returning to the old ‘trickle-down economics’ supported by Republicans as Trump gets ready to enter the White House – if making the rich richer will somehow ‘trickle down’ to working and middle-class Americans insisting he’s leaving behind ‘the strongest economy in modern history’.
Biden’s four-year term expires on January 20 when Trump is inaugurated for his second term as president.
