Trump Accused Biden of Assorted Wrongs

No wonder the phrase “Every accusation is a confession” has taken hold

Consistency is for suckers in the era of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. From censorship to persecuting Christians to inflation to corruption, the duo has been surpassing the very things MAGA forces decried (falsely) in the Biden administration.

“Censorship” was a big deal for Trump, once upon a time. His allies disparaged and even sued the Biden administration for contacting social media companies to even discuss disinformation. Now: “The White House blocked an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday after demanding the news agency alter its style on the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump has ordered renamed the Gulf of America,” the Associated Press reports.

In other words, we have gone from fake censorship to the real deal.

Of course, the Musk gnomes are searching through grants, personnel data, and other records for mention of verboten words (e.g. “gender,” or “bias”). Do you want NIH funding to study gender differences in reactions to any given medical treatment? Do you want to eliminate “bias” in contracting? I’m afraid you might be out of luck.

Trump made the baseless accusation that Christians are a persecuted minority in America. His proof was drawn from his highly scientific analysis that some people say: “Happy Holidays.” (As Christian evangelical writer David French noted, “Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat—of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.”) Rather than provide real evidence of such discrimination, MAGA forces seem intent on excising the anti-Establishment Clause from the Constitution.

Under Trump, we’re seeing actual persecution of Christians. This week, “12 national denominational bodies and representatives, 4 regional denominational bodies, and 11 denominational and interdenominational associations, all rooted in the Jewish and Christian faiths” sued over the Trump administrations declaration that it would go into houses of worship to execute ordinary immigration raids, an about-face in thirty years of established practice.

In attempting to end asylum-prosecuting and announcing its determination to deport tens of millions of people, religious leaders have recoiled at the announcement. The freeze in USAID funds (since reversed by court order) prompted cries of outrage from “organizations that lost funding …such Christian behemoths as World Vision, International Justice Mission, Samaritan's Purse, and Catholic Relief Services, which at $476 million, was the largest USAID recipient in 2024,” Time magazine reported.

Let’s not forget that inflation and “bringing down prices” were front and center in Trump’s campaign pitch. But the latest report from the Labor Department showed “U.S. inflation accelerated last month as the cost of groceries, gasoline and rents rose…The consumer price index has increased from a 3 1/2 year low of 2.4% in September” to 3 percent, where it now sits. He also enacted what amounts to a massive sales tax on steel and aluminum and threatened to do so on all goods from Canada and Mexico (now on hold). Musk’s helpers also pulled the plug on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That agency regulated outrageous credit card fees, went after junk fees, and limited banking funds, successfully clawing back about $20B for consumers. Now financial entities can have a field day charging consumers up the wazoo. I don’t have a whiteboard in front of me, but it sure sounds like he is increasing costs on American families.

Then there is the “corruption.” MAGA congressmen were convinced the “Biden crime family” were on the take from China. (No evidence came to light.) Trump also alleged that he was the victim of weaponized justice. There was no there, there.

By contrast, he has now weaponed the Justice Department to collect names of FBI employees who work on (successful) prosecutions. The day after USAID’s inspector general released a report documenting the waste and loss stemming from the ill-advised and legally suspect freeze, he got canned: “Recent widespread staffing reductions across the Agency … coupled with uncertainty about the scope of foreign assistance waivers and permissible communications with implementers, has degraded USAID’s ability to distribute and safeguard taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance,” the report said.

Conflicts of interest are not hard to spot in the Musk-Trump era. Trump released a cryptocurrency before taking office—evidently without paying much mind to the fact that it allows domestic and foreign actors to enrich Trump. (Do not expect the SEC to be regulating crypto so long as Trump is making money.) Meanwhile, “As Musk works to slash federal spending, his own firms have received billions in government contracts,” reads ABC News’s headline.

The descent into banana-republic style government has been swift. Corruption investigators (inspectors general) were fired en masse; after visiting Mar-a-Lago and flattering Trump, Eric Adams’s prosecution on five counts of public corruption is on hold, presumably so long as he helps Trump carry out his anti-immigrant crusade. Trump appoints unqualified family members and toadies to high office, lets Musk (a government contractor) run wild in the federal government (until stopped by courts), attempts to fire career government employees who do not evince sufficient loyalty, and ends enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Revenge and reward guide this crowd, not merit.

Whether you train your gaze on censorship, persecution of Christians, deliberately raising costs on your family, or displaying unabashed corruption – gasp! – the president is far more dangerous than those he accused of similar ills. No wonder the slam against Trump, “Every accusation is a confession,” has taken hold.