Appearing on Meet the Press this Sunday, Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz was asked by host Kristen Welker about a new report revealing that as the Iran war drags on, “U.S. military commanders have been picking and choosing which Iranian missiles and explosive-packed drones to intercept and are allowing some attacks through their defenses,” since stockpiles of interceptors are running low. Asked about this situation, Walz said the shortage of equipment is Joe Biden’s fault, but also there is no shortage, but also anyone who tells the press about the shortage should go to jail:
Waltz also claimed that it’s not just equipment; the Trump administration inherited a “depleted military under the Biden administration.” This is, of course, utter baloney; the defense budget increased every year Joe Biden was in office. I suppose it’s possible that Waltz was referring to the depletion of the military’s sense of manly confidence, since under Biden, women and Black officers were permitted to serve in positions of authority, a situation that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has remedied with enthusiasm. But since he didn’t mention that, we can assume he was still talking about equipment.
While Welker pressed him a little before moving on, she failed to ask the obvious question reporters are failing ask when this comes up, a question that grows increasingly pressing as time goes on:
“At what point are you and everyone in this administration going to stop blaming Joe Biden for everything that goes wrong? Why don’t you ever take responsibility?”
The simplest answer is that the tone has been set by the president, who never takes responsibility for anything, not even in a “the buck stops here,” I’m-the-boss-so-I’m-ultimately-accountable way. He famously said “I don’t take responsibility at all” in the early days of the covid pandemic when asked why the U.S. was lagging in its ability to test for the virus. The violent January 6 insurrection, he said at one point, was the fault of the “Biden FBI,” despite the fact that Biden wouldn’t take office for another two weeks. Trump said Signalgate, when Mike Waltz added a journalist to a sensitive group chat about war planning, was actually Joe Biden’s fault because Biden hadn’t attacked Yemen. Two months into his term, the New York Times documented what had become a verbal tic for Trump:
Mr. Trump has made Mr. Biden into a political boogeyman so epic and omnipresent that it is impossible to ignore. His use of the name is most commonly followed by a verb: “Biden fudged the numbers … Biden canceled it … Biden let them get away with murder … Biden’s done nothing … Biden left him up there … Biden allowed it to get out of hand … Biden left us a mess … Biden said the wrong things … Biden gave away money like it was water … Biden set us up in Venezuela … Biden allowed China to go crazy … Biden ended it … Biden really screwed up our country.”
That was in March 2025. Of course, in the beginning of any presidency, the administration does have to deal with the situation they were handed by their predecessors. What distinguishes this president — and therefore not only his own administration spokespeople but other Republicans, who repeat whatever Trump says — is not only that they blame their own screwups on Biden when there is no plausible connection to the previous presidency, but that there appears to be no time limit on the Biden-blaming. We’re now a year and a half into the second Trump term, and everything is still Biden’s fault.
Grocery prices are high? Joe Biden’s fault. Gas prices are high? Joe Biden’s fault. ICE killing people in the street? Joe Biden’s fault. Housing unaffordable? Joe Biden’s fault. Trump’s trade war hurting farmers? Joe Biden’s fault. Screwworms killing cattle in Texas? Joe Biden’s fault.
There is no subtlety to this argument. “I would remind your viewers and the American people of who caused the affordability crisis in this country,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt when asked about the midterms by hard-hitting journalist Lara Trump. “It was Joe Biden and it was the Democrats in this city when they were in power, and President Trump took immediate action on Day One to fix that.” But if that’s what Trump did on Day 1, and that was 18 months ago, shouldn’t it be fixed?
As I have argued before, this administration is filled with men who pretend to be ultra-masculine but are in fact the whiniest babies in the world, always bitching and moaning about how they’re being treated unfairly and no one should be allowed to be mean to them. All the Biden-blaming, from Trump on down, is yet more evidence of how pathetically weak they are.
So journalists need to start asking them, and keep asking them: At what point will you stop blaming Joe Biden for your own failures?
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