COVID-19 Deaths Under Biden: Are Democrats Hypocritical?

Liberal Hypocrisy: When Obama Was President Democrats Were Okay With Him Being President, But When Trump Is President Suddenly It’s Wrong To Be President? — Clickhole Headline, 8/20/2018

On 3/1/2021, Fox News Host Lawrence Jones said the following:

More than 100,000 people have died from COVID-19 since Joe Biden took office. That’s on his watch. I thought he had a plan to shut down the virus. What happened? Add it to the list of campaign promises made but never kept.

Of course, Jones is spouting nonsense when he blames those COVID-19 deaths on Joe Biden, and this might seem like normal stupidity from a man who once blamed Jeffery Epstein’s light prison sentence in 2008 on Barack Obama, who he claimed was President at the time. (For those unaware, Obama did not become President until 1/20/2009.) However, the point is not to actually call out Joe Biden, but to catch liberals in a trap. They say that these deaths cannot be blamed on Joe Biden, leading to the Fox News anchor, or the average Fox News viewer, to state that this is evidence of Democrat hypocrisy because Democrats blamed every COVID-19 on Donald Trump.

Ever since the Biden administration started, Republicans have been blasting this supposed hypocrisy. The day Biden was inaugurated, the Washington Free Beacon created a counter of death counts under Joe Biden, at 104,604 as of 3/1/2021. Mind you, since COVID-19 has an incubation period of at least two weeks, only deaths from at earliest 2/3/2021 onward can be said to have from cases caught under Biden — the period before this was also when 40,000 people died of COVID-19.

So imminently, any number about COVID-19 deaths under Biden already includes 40,000 which could not be blamed on him. However, are the Democrats hypocrites for blaming every COVID-19 death under Trump on him while not blaming the 100,00 who died under Biden on him? Well, they would be if anyone was actually making that argument.

In truth, not a single person blames every COVID-19 death in the United States fully on Donald Trump. I followed liberal criticisms of Donald Trump rather closely and nobody — not John Oliver, not Brian Morans, and not Keith Olbermann. If they did, why would they encourage mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccination? In fact, just yesterday Keith Olbermann got in trouble for joking that we shouldn’t give COVID-19 vaccines to Texas in response to Greg Abbott's announcement that Texas is re-opening. Odd position for someone to take if they believe the President could snap his fingers and end COVID-19 forever. What people actually argue is that, as the President of the United States, Donald Trump could have done many things to soften the blow of COVID-19 that he did not.

One example is the various protests over stay-at-home orders held all throughout the early summer of 2020. Many of these protests were held by Trump supporters, and if Trump said he supported stay-at-home orders. it would have likely lowered the number of people protesting. One person at a protest even said when asked that the only reason he’s not worried is because Donald Trump is not worried. Instead, Trump supported the protests, tweeting that governors should “liberate” their citizens by lifting them.

People also blame the Trump Administration for its constant promises of re-opening even when re-opening is simply not possible. You might remember this whole thing started as “fifteen days to slow the spread,” with the President promising us we could re-open by Easter. Seriously, here’s Trump on 3/24/2020:

I’d love to have it open by Easter, OK? I would love to have it open by Easter. I will tell you that right now.

Throughout the entire pandemic, Trump did everything possible to downplay the illness because he didn’t want to scare the public of an airborne illness that states were put in lockdown over. It’s not me saying that, it was Donald Trump saying that to Bob Woodward:

Trump: I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down…

Woodward: Yes.

Trump: …Because I don’t want to create a panic.

While this was seen as a big shock when Woodward first released the clip, it should be noted that this is less some big surprise and more Trump admitting what many of us already knew. This was the man who wanted Americans to remain on a cruise-ship infested with COVID-19 because bringing them back would increase the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States. This was the man who repeatedly refused to test for COVID-19 because, by his own admission, doing so would mean more counted cases in the United States. This was the same man who said this:

One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.

So has Biden downplayed COVID-19? Well, he has certainly downplayed its possibility to spread from schools in a rush to re-open them, and I have been one of the most vocal critics of him on that front. However, these small downplays are barely anything compared to what Donald Trump did.

For comparison, this is Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic advisor, on 2/25/2020:

We have contained [COVID-19]. I won’t say [it’s] airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight.

Meanwhile, if you want after Biden for anything, it’s that he’s been raising too much paranoia on COVID-19. This is the man who still wears a mask in public, as does Vice-President Harris, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Schumer, in spite of the fact that all of them are vaccinated and none of them need to. Meanwhile, Donald Trump did such a bad job handling COVID-19 that he himself caught it as did many members of his administration.

In fact, the worst things the Democrats have done regarding COVID-19 have been because they bought into the Republican narrative. The dogmatic demand for re-openings especially in schools, as well as the push for hybrid models for months before, were because they bought the Republican arguments against lockdowns.

Basically, while Joe Biden has not handled this crisis perfectly, he has handled it far better than Donald Trump. For that matter, even though none of the deaths from COVID-19 were fully Donald Trump’s fault, his administration could have done many things to lower the death count that it did not. Considering Biden is doing many of the things that Donald Trump did not, he is even less to blame for any COVID-19 death than Donald Trump was.