Morning Wire - Biden to Trump: A Tale of Two Presidencies | 1.19.25

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

The defining moments of Joe Biden’s presidency and what Donald Trump’s second term could mean for America. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Monday, Joe Biden will exit stage left as Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. One presidential legacy is now in the books, and another, Trump's remarkable comeback second term, is about to be written. In this episode, we sit down with an historian to discuss the defining moments of Biden's presidency and what to expect from Trump's second term. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, January 19th, and this is a, weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss Joe Biden's legacy and expectations around Trump's second term is Jared Stepman, author of The War on History, The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past. Jared, thanks for coming on.

Oh, thank you very much. Let's start by looking back with a post-mortem on Biden's presidency. He gave his farewell address on Wednesday evening. What stood out to you about it? It really felt like in this address that this was the Friday Night News Dump farewell addresses. I really felt that it was a very low energy, which I think defined, especially the last part of his presidency. He focused on things like the spread of misinformation and perhaps censorship of online media, which I thought was a very peculiar take for a president trying to define his presidency, his one term in office.

And I felt that the speech itself had very little impact, which I think is very fitting for the Biden presidency that seems to have wound down into nothing very quickly. But it seems to be an outlier too, because farewell addresses are usually a defining moment of any presidency, how to define his term. And Biden simply faded out, which I think is very appropriate for his presidency. Joe Biden's presidency was plagued by inflation and a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. what else will he be remembered for? I actually think that he will be remembered for being a frail man who represented crumbling institutions at the end of history. I think that really is what's defined the Biden presidency.

He was very much came into office as an institutionalist. He was supposed to represent the third term of Barack Obama, a sort of attempt to create a permanent democratic majority through the executive branch. I think that that basically ground to a halt at the end of Biden's presidency. I think he was a president who was oftentimes, though executively, I think very strong, he was a president who was often missing in action,

especially when the country was counting on him. When you had incidents like the failed Afghanistan withdrawal that really turned into a shambolic affair, President Biden was often nowhere to be seen and it was unclear where exactly the buck stopped in our executive branch. Nobody at the top seemed to have lost their job and business continued on as usual. I think that these were ominous signs. about his presidency that was more ruled by the various executive agencies than the man at the top, than the man who was actually elected to be president of the United States.

So I think his legacy was of an institutionalist and institutions that were losing favor from the American people and going in a direction that Americans didn't want. Often a presidential legacy becomes boiled down to just one or two defining moments or developments. What will come to define Biden's legacy? Again, I think that Biden was an institutionalist at a time where the confidence in institutions was crumbling. And I think that Biden's behavior, his frailty, his inability to actually be a strong leader in a time of, I think, great challenges to an old system that had been in place will define his presidency. I think it was very symbolic, especially given the man who will eventually replace him, who two men who come from their similar age. They come from a similar age demographic that represent two very different directions for the American people.

And I think that Biden, really, his legacy will be ushering in the age of Trump at the end of the age of Biden. He happens to also have been our 45th president. That's non-consecutive terms. This has only happened one other time in our country's history. Do you believe the gap will have a positive or negative influence on his second term and how he governs? I think the gap will actually have a positive effect on a second term. Now, everything will be quickened. It's almost like he'll be very quickly a lame duck president. That's obviously something that happens at the end of a presidency. It's certainly a unique situation in American history.

This has only happened one other time with Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century. But this is actually, I think, a unique situation even in comparison to that because Trump didn't just lose a presidency. He was really up against many institutions that tried to squeeze him out to prevent him from ever coming back into office ever again. again, that Trump was able to triumph over all those forces, both the political institutional forces and also the media forces that tried to keep him out of the White House. The fact that he triumphed, given those challenging circumstances, makes this a unique return to the White House. And I think it actually very much empowers him. It may end up being a sort of blessing in disguise, because I think that Trump, the first time around, you could say that his presidency

was maybe a bit on accident, that Democrats had simply gotten lazy. or careless in allowing this man to become president. I think especially given the headwinds that were against him and the fact that now Trump comes in more popular than he's ever been. He comes in with closer to what you consider an electoral mandate. He actually didn't just win the electoral college. He seems to have won the popular vote as well, which he certainly has touted. I think it makes him a lot stronger than in 2016, especially given now his experience actually running the White House and being a statesman. Whereas before, he had very little experience in politics.

He was a complete neophyte. He was a man of business and entertainment, but now he's a man with quite a bit of experience in running the executive branch with his own outlook on how to run things. And so I think he's going to hit the ground running faster this time than he did last time and have his own institutional support

as opposed to 2016. There's been a lot made of the resistance movement against Trump over the years, and it was very robust in his first term. we had a huge array of resistance elements in the government and the media, and they had a lot of power at that point. And it does seem like this last election, so many of those institutions, as you pointed out, were failing. His defeat of them seems to have undermined the idea that there could be as robust of a resistance. What do you see coming in terms of that effort against Trump?

Will it be as impactful as it was in 2016? I think it's going to be much more marginalized in comparison to that time. again, because Trump comes in with so much more of a mandate this time around. And Trump is not going to be surprised about the hashtag resistance this time around. In fact, I think he's keenly aware of it. It may even become a defining domestically as far as what he does in the White House part of his presidency. I think he's going to use a lot of tools, including something called Schedule F, to remove recalcitrant bureaucrats. I think that in many cases, this election was defined about Trump's

kind of populist uprising against the bureaucracy. I know that Biden Democrats tried to define themselves as standing with democracy, but it really was an uprising against the bureaucratic fiat that I think was ruling the country during the Biden administration. And I think that the bureaucrats who were so empowered during the Biden presidency, I think they've lost a lot of power. And I think that there's going to be a lot less tolerance within the Trump administration for that kind of resistance. And I think the American people are fed up with it, too. So I do think that there's going to be a sort of revival of a kind of popular self-government. And I think that will define the Trump presidency.

All right. So weeding out bad elements in the bureaucracy. What other specific actions or policies do you believe he'll pursue based on the campaign trail rhetoric and the kinds of nominations he's made for his cabinet? Yeah, I think something that's going to happen immediately. I think he's going to restore a lot of the immigration and border policies of his first term, including the Remain in Mexico policy. I think that is going to be absolutely a priority.

I think something that's going to be worked on in joint with the legislature is undoing some of Biden's executive decisions in the bureaucratic fight, especially when it came to redefining gender through Title IX, which was, I think, a very big issue, I think an underrated issue of the Biden presidency. There's already a bill in the House to undo that, to undo those changes that happen under the Biden administration. And of course, there's going to be, I think, in his first. first term, the first 100 days in office will also re-implement tax cuts from his first administration.

But I think that those will be the big priorities, especially the border, which is, I think that was a big theme of his first term, but now seems to be even more of a crisis, especially given the fact that under the Biden administration, there was a massive surge of illegal immigration. A lot of even Biden's supporters to turn against him with a lot of chaos in American cities, and a lot of chaos across the country, not just at the border. What do you make of Trump's cabinet picks so far? We've had some days now of confirmation hearings. Is there a sense of a unified message from those cabinet picks?

I think its cabinet picks are very interesting because all of them, while they have some, you know, disagreement on various issues, all of them represent a critique of those various institutions. If it's somebody like Pete Higgseth at the Defense Department, this is a man who comes in not as a four-star general. He comes in as a man who has experience as just a regular soldier criticizing the woke DEI direction of the agency. You have somebody like Cash Patel, a man who was not part of the FBI now being potentially put at the head of the FBI in criticism of the way that the FBI has operated during the Biden presidency. And so he really has created a team of outsiders,

many of whom have very impressive resumes, but they are sort of anti-institutionalists. And I think that this time around Trump is less dependent on the sort of conservative Republican infrastructure that exists in Washington, D.C., and now has his own team that's going to define his presidency. And I think that that is a big difference from the first time around. I think Trump has a much more clear and defined different direction for where he wants to take his presidency and the issues that he wants to prioritize. I think all of his cabinet picks represent Trump's various feelings about the issues in those, this various. policy areas. In his first term, Trump focused on significant deregulation and judicial appointments.

Based on his rhetoric and policy priorities, what legacy building actions do you think he'll focus on this time around? Interestingly enough, I think that a big part of his legacy is actually going to be his foreign policy. It's something that's an underrated part of Trump. I think he was a very strong present in foreign policy during his first term. But I think you can even see in the days before he actually enters the White House how much he's prioritized issues like acquiring Greenland or reacquiring possibly the Panama Canal, talking about a revival of a sort of Monroe Doctrine, ending conflicts around the globe. There's been a deal to end the war between Israel and Hamas and potentially in the future, and I think it will be a priority ending the war in Ukraine. And I think that Trump actually will make foreign policy a priority. Because I think

the way that Trump looks at it, if there is going to be a golden era of the United States, and he is going to make a lot of changes domestically, that means that he must prevent any kind of global catastrophe, any kind of potential war with China. So I think he is going to create a more realist perspective in American foreign policy and focus on containing the threat of communist China, which represents a real threat to the United States. I think the appointment of Marco Rubio at the State Department, I think really defines that. And I think that will be a huge part of his legacy that is very underrated, especially when people, I think, mostly focus on his domestic outlook. I think his foreign policy is actually a huge part of what Trump does as president, what he does

best. Yeah, I think you're probably right there. Final question, Trump has vowed to make America great again. Do you see things aligning in such a way that he'll be able to pull off that very lofty goal? I think it is a massive challenge. As I said, that Biden really represented the last part of crumbling institutions at the end history. I think that Trump represents potentially a great man and a return to history. Now, that means many complicated and dangerous things. I think we're returning to an era of great power

conflict, something that we hadn't experienced in a very long time. The United States has had no challenge or peers since the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, we have that again. I think there's a lot of questions about the end of the Cold War, the post-Cold War consensus that Americans have come to regret some of the things that have happened since that time. And I think Trump has an enormous challenge ahead of him. It's certainly too much, I think, for simply one man to be expected to restore confidence in America and continue into this new American century. But I think Trump is uniquely placed. I think he represents a pivot point in American history. And I think if he does actually pull this off, he will certainly be remembered as one of the

great presidents in the country's history. I think that there's no question. I think the contrast between him and his predecessor will be enormous. Now, whether that ends up being a spectacular catastrophe or spectacular revival, I think, is really up to him and how he treats issues and how he performs in office. But I think he is at a point in which he could have enormous impact over the trajectory of the United States and really the world. In the meantime, enormous anticipation leading up to this inauguration and what will follow in Trump's first executive actions. Jared, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

And to remind our listeners, the Daily Wire will be live in D.C. for the inauguration. So look for that coverage on our website and app. Thanks for waking up with us. This has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.