If little else to brag about, Joe Biden has made good on his pre-election promise that he would be entirely unlike Donald Trump … with no more of those annoying tweets.
The Southern Border
On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order to end Trump's nearly 500 miles of new wall construction … about a month short of completion time caused by Democrat lawsuit delays.
Perhaps just as — or even more important — the Biden administration tore up Trump's "stay in Mexico policy" agreement which had arranged for asylum-seeking immigrants to stay on the other side of the border for vetting and processing, with 28,000 Mexican soldiers stationed there to secure their side of the border.
According to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a total of 929,868 illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the border since Oct.1 of last year, putting the U.S. on pace to top 1.55 million illegal immigrants in this fiscal year.
In addition, Team Biden reestablished Obama's "catch-and-release" policy, wasting ICE agent time, efforts and morale as they were reassigned to attending the needs of unaccompanied children delivered by coyote human and narcotic traffickers.
Joe Biden's reversal of Trump policies has consequentially resulted in a full-blown border crisis exemplified by children inhumanely crowded in disgusting COVID-infested facilities and subsequent nationwide transfers to a neighborhood near you.
WHO and the Wuhan Virus
Recall that on January 31, 2020 — the day after the CDC publicly confirmed the first person-to-person COVID-19 transmission — Trump had overruled World Health Organization (WHO) "experts" and shut down flights from China.
Joe Biden had criticized the China travel ban, stating, "This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysteria and xenophobia."
Upon taking the White House, President Biden wasted no time in rejoining WHO, that same organization that had declared on January 14 of that year that Chinese authorities had found no clear evidence of human-to-human virus transmission.
We know now that WHO has persistently run interference with scientific investigations into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) "China virus" origins.
And as a January State Department disclosure confirmed, "The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."
In short, Trump was right all along.
The Iran Nuclear Deal
In 2018, Donald Trump was also correct in pulling America out of the former Obama-Biden administration’s agreement to join the disastrous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — more broadly known as the “Iran Nuclear Deal” — fecklessly negotiated by then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Throughout the course of JCPOA, Iran continued to enrich uranium up to a near-nuclear weapons level of 60% purity, along with unrestricted progress in developing intercontinental delivery missiles.
The Biden-Harris administration appears eager to return to the negotiating table with a yet-to-be-determined offer to lift punitively punishing Iran sanctions in exchange for another meaningless round of toothless promises that Tehran mullahs will abandon their nuclear weaponry ambitions.
As noted in a recent open letter signed by 124 retired U.S. generals and admirals, "Re-engaging in the flawed Iran Nuclear Deal would result in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons along with the means to deliver them, thereby upsetting Mideast peace initiatives and aiding a terrorist nation whose slogans and goals include ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Israel.'"
Middle East Powder Keg
Trump also moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as he promised to do as president-elect, an action that Kerry incorrectly predicted at the time would cause “an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region.”
Trump administration leadership was additionally instrumental in achieving historic peace and cooperation agreements between Israel and Arabian signatories Sudan, Morocco, Serbia, and the Muslim nation of Kosovo under a set of understandings known as the “Abraham Accords.”
Not one of those countries has withdrawn from those agreements since Israeli bombers retaliated with force to massive barrages of terrorist Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas rockets launched from Gaza against dense population centers in Tel Aviv.
The Paris Climate Accord
The Biden-Harris administration’s Climate Envoy Kerry will now have a central lead role in returning the U.S. as a former Obama-Biden administration party to the Paris Climate Accord, a non-congressionally ratified relationship that Trump had also terminated.
The administration’s current plan is to build political momentum ahead of a November U.N. climate conference to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, where negotiators will aim to cap average global annual temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius preindustrial levels.
Meanwhile, as America commits to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 50% or more by 2030 over a baseline 2005 level, about doubling a 26% to 28% cut by 2025 proposed by the Obama-Biden administration, China, which along with India leads the world in these emissions and is dramatically ramping up coal development, gets a free pass.
Under Paris, China isn’t required to even begin cutting back its CO2 emission levels until 2030.
Beijing leadership clearly welcomes an opportunity to leverage advantages of Biden’s climate obsession to gain U.S. concessions amid bilateral frictions over trade, technology theft, Taiwan and Hong Kong threats, territorial expansion in the South China Sea, human rights abuses, and attributions of blame for devastating global COVID impacts.
Pipelines and Pipe Dreams
Meanwhile, President Biden has also wasted no time working to end the fracking revolution and eliminate Trump-era accomplishments in finally making America independent of foreign oil for the first time in many decades. During his very first day in the Oval Office, Joe issued executive orders to cap the Keystone XL pipeline and place a moratorium on oil and gas drilling on federal land and waters.
A ruling this month by Louisiana U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in response to suits filed by 13 states has blocked the latter drilling prohibition order.
Meanwhile, Biden has removed Trump sanctions to allow Russia to complete its Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic to deliver Siberian natural gas to Germany with no climate justification or other explanation whatsoever.
After all, didn’t Biden promise to draw a contrast between himself and Trump by vowing there would be no more "rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive actions"?
And taken altogether with other Biden bungles noted, are you beginning to wax nostalgic about those previously annoying Trump tweets yet?
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, "What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional," (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.