President Donald Trump has been in office for more than three months, but he is still constantly bringing up his predecessor. Whether it’s casting blame or aspersions, Trump can’t stop talking about former President Joe Biden. In recent weeks, he’s mentioned Biden when asked about the stock market, the war in Gaza, what he’s doing to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and his decision to send Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador.
On Friday, NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump when he’ll take responsibility for the performance of the U.S. economy. “I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy,” Trump said. It was one of about 20 mentions of “Biden” Trump made in the interview, according to the transcript. The previous week, Trump mentioned Biden a dozen times during an interview with TIME.
In the Trump White House’s first 100 days, “Biden” was the fifth most frequently used word, according to a TIME analysis of transcripts of his public remarks and those of key spokespeople. The former President’s last name was uttered more than “border” and just less than the word “deal.” The most frequently used word was “great,” followed by “American” and “tariff.” To come up with the tally, TIME used an AI algorithm to analyze 92 events where Trump made on-camera remarks as well as press briefings his top officials held at the White House.
Andrew Bates, Biden’s former senior deputy White House press secretary, views the constant blaming of his former boss as “counterproductive” for Trump. “The economy was better off when Joe Biden left office—Trump actively damaged it, and so every time he says Joe Biden’s name it just makes people remember a time when the economy was better,” Bates says.
Yet Trump appears more than happy to continue blaming Biden for bad economic news. After the Commerce Department released data last week showing the gross domestic product shrank slightly in the first quarter, Trump said “This is Biden,” and then made clear a similar response may be coming in July. “You could even say the next quarter is sort of Biden.”
Polls suggest the public is likely to connect any upcoming economic troubles to Trump’s trade war. Gallup polling released in late April found that 70% of Americans believe Trump’s new tariffs will cost the U.S. more than they generate in the short term. And 89% of American adults believe the tariffs will likely result in higher prices.
In recent weeks, Biden has started stepping back into the spotlight. In mid-April, he gave a speech in which he criticized Trump’s haphazard firings and cost cuttings in the federal government, saying Trump’s administration is “shooting first and aiming later” and described Trump’s first months in office as being full of “damage” and “destruction” to programs that serve veterans and seniors. On Thursday, Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden will join the hosts of ABC’s The View.
Biden’s return to the national stage comes ahead of the release of multiple books looking at how his aides grappled with questions about his mental acuity during his time in office. At the end of May, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson plan to publish “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey, The New York Times’ Tyler Pager and the Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf teamed up to write “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” which is slated for early July.
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