Washington
Cnn
–
Joe Biden left the White House almost a month ago, but he is never far from Donald Trump’s mind.
The former president was a recurring punchline – and a bag of punch – in almost all the appearances that Trump has made since his return to power. With the Republicans in full control of Washington, Trump is forever looking for a sheet and Biden is at the top of the list.
“A large part of these things is because of Biden,” said Trump last week in the Oval Office, referring to the authorization of federal employees authorized to be remotely remote. “It’s his fault.”
For Trump, the male stops with Biden – not with him. This is a new wrinkle for the panel that sat on the Harry Truman desk, “The Buck stops here”, a sentence has been a principal principle of most presidents since.
The list of challenges that Trump and his team have attributed to Biden are long: the high price of eggs, the accident of an airliner in the Potomac river, poorly managed the reductions in FEMA, the wars in Gaza and En en Ukraine, the proliferation of terrorists in Somalia, expanding American trade deficits, a deterioration of relations with Beijing.
“I think Biden is incompetent,” said Trump, calling his predecessor eight times on Thursday as he blamed him for the Ukraine Russian War. “I think when he said they could join NATO, I thought it was a very stupid thing to say.”
Although the problems of each presidency are inextricably linked, Biden’s occupies an unusual place in history, with his administration taken into sandwich between the first and second terms of Trump. When Biden took office, he wanted not to mention Trump by name, a practice he abandoned over time.
For years, Biden has occupied a singular place in the mind of Trump, say the aid, a rival forever that he has never defeated in the polls. Trump revels in the use of Biden as a metaphor for a striking contrast in style and substance.
While Trump settles in his signing routine of the actions of the executives, while answering a wide range of questions from journalists almost every day, he called his predecessors of tens of times last week on Ukraine, the ‘illegal immigration and its disgust for paper straws.
“All of this was led by Biden and the group of stupid people,” said Trump, exploding Biden’s border policies. He quickly went to American aid in Ukraine, saying: “Biden gives it because he is not an intelligent individual.”
It doesn’t matter that Trump has entered history and became the 47th president by defeating Kamala Harris. He rarely mentions it by name, even if he frequently vibra in the states of the battlefield he carried and the popular vote he won in November.
Instead, Trump is still going back to Biden.
“We did more in two weeks that Biden did not do it in five, six years,” said Trump one afternoon when he was sitting behind the office resolved at the Oval office, where Biden – who was president For four years – left a message to wish his successor, writing: “May God bless you and guide you.”
Rarely spent a day since Trump’s return to power that he has not invoked the name of Biden – lowering, blaming, Badmouth – above his national program, his foreign policy and more.
At most every turn, Trump underlines the age of his former rival (Biden is 82, Trump is 78 years old) and questions his mental acuity, which Trump did again when he said that he revoked the ‘Biden security authorization and access to daily intelligence briefings.
This decision, which Trump revealed during a flight to Mar-A-Lago last weekend, came exactly four years after Biden did the same against Trump, citing his “erratic behavior” before and after the January 6, 2021, the attack on the American Capitol.
“Joe, you are fired,” said Trump in a message on social networks, announcing this decision. He finished with his signature slogan, “to make America great again”.
For his part, Biden settled in his post-care life in Delaware.
He sometimes talked to friends and long -standing allies of Trump, say familiar people with conversations, often expressing a feeling of dismay and astonishment during a turn of whirlwind of events. If he accepts a blame for his role in the return of Trump, he did not say it, even in private.
Several former Biden advisers said they preferred not to speak openly about the frequentness of their former boss’s Trump. A spokesperson for Biden refused to comment.
Tim Naftali, presidential historian and former director of the presidential library of Richard Nixon, said that Trump’s obsession for Biden stands out in a long line of relations from one American leader to the next.
“After winning the popular vote and benefiting from much better approval grades in his first weeks, it is remarkable that he cares,” said Naftali, who is also a CNN contributor. “He refers to President Biden more often than Democrats.”
He added: “Talking about Biden is a way to mobilize his base and he simply cannot move away from it.”
When Trump became president for the first time eight years ago, he called his defeated rival, Hillary Clinton, again and again and adopted a similar attitude towards his then prevailing, Barack Obama, who left his functions with A much higher approval rating than Biden. Their acrimony had come back to years, when Trump falsely said that Obama was born outside the United States.
At the time, enmity was considered a major violation of presidential history. Almost always, the presidents of the two parties tried to maintain at least the appearance of collegiality with their predecessors, even when they despised them secretly and delivered public criticism in a more subtle way.
This is not the case with Trump, who wore his disdain on his round. He accused Obama of having interrupted him to Trump Tower, in addition to a wide range of other faults. He had few people to say about his Republican predecessors, notably George HW Bush and George W. Bush, whom he accused of heat.
In Biden, Trump has a much less popular leaf than with Obama.
The 46th president left his duties with ratings of historically weak approval and was widely criticized, even by the Democrats, so as not to withdraw earlier to allow Harris or another candidate to set up a full campaign to prevent Trump .
However, at one point, Trump seemed to have some sympathy for Biden’s difficult situation. He deplored what he described as an unworthy and cruel process to put the president of the Democratic ticket.
“The presidency was kidnapped at Joe Biden, and I am not a Biden fan,” he said a few weeks after Biden has dismissed.
The jokes continued at a meeting a week after the November elections, when Trump and Biden met for almost two hours to discuss a peaceful transition from power.
“It will be as fluid as possible,” said Trump, “and I really appreciate that, Joe.”
However, this tone was short -lived.
While Trump stopped criticizing Biden by name during his inaugural speech, even if he said that “the decline of America is over”, he did not wait long to do so. At the end of his first week in power, Biden had already become a recurring scenario in Trump’s speeches.
To a crowd of supporters during a rally in Las Vegas, Trump told conversations he had said that he had with foreign counterparts where he said, without evidence, some had tried to contact Biden, for him say that he was sleeping.
“He will call you back in two months,” said Trump that foreign leaders had been informed, citing French President Emmanuel Macron as a source.
Where Trump has so far not been ventured, he launched an official criminal investigation into Biden himself, although he conducted his attorney general when taking the creation of large-scale probes on previous administration.
Based on the comments that Trump made shortly after taking office, an investigation into Biden may not be far away.
“I crossed four years of hell by this foam with which we had to face. I crossed four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal expense and won, but I did it hard, “Trump told Fox News. “It is really difficult to say that they should not have to go through it too. It is very difficult to say that.
Trump did not stop there, adding: “What is funny, perhaps the sad thing is that he did not give a forgiveness.”