Biden won an election through deception

President Joe Biden made two messages central to his campaign – that he would “restore the soul of the nation” by ousting his predecessor Donald Trump and that he had a better, science-based plan to address the coronavirus pandemic. He used those messages in his bid to win the 2020 election, but we now know that both of those claims were based on insidious lies with significant consequences, the kind that alter the course of the Republic.

During a White House press conference Friday, Biden gave a pessimistic outlook on the state of the coronavirus, despite promising that if he was elected he would have a plan to solve the pandemic. While speaking about his “American Rescue Plan” and the necessity to avoid mass foreclosures and evictions, he declared there was nothing he could do to change the course of the pandemic.

“If we fail to act, there will be a wave of evictions and foreclosures in the coming months as this pandemic rages on. Because there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” he said.

Later in his remarks, Biden claimed the trajectory of the pandemic would mean that another 200,000 Americans would die from the virus. “A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. Over 400,00 dead, expected to be well over 600,000,” he said.

This isn’t “leveling” with the people as he said he would do. This is Biden abdicating responsibility for when bad things happen and revealing his plan was never more sophisticated than President Trump’s. He lied to Americans, and won an election by doing so.

Liberals might defend Biden by blaming Trump for the present circumstances, despite the fact the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed developed a vaccine at an unprecedented rate. Telling Americans that another 200,000 of their countrymen will die and that there’s nothing you can do about it, despite promising to “shut down” the virus if elected, isn’t noble truth-telling or “building back better.” It is a grave deception that far outweighs the consequences of Trump’s embellishments of fact.

Biden’s deception about his plan shouldn’t shock anyone though. His campaign was fueled by deception, and not just about how he would handle the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden launched his presidential campaign in April 2019 by arguing America was an idea, invoking the words written in the Declaration of Independence. It was almost reassuring to hear that kind of talk from a Democratic leader. But then he contrasted that message with a dark vision of America under Trump by falsely characterizing his response to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Neo-Nazis assembled there to bark contemptible chants rooted in their reprehensible ideology, which Trump condemned, and a young woman was tragically killed in that chaos. There were also individuals there, as Trump noted, who simply protested calls to tear down statues of figures like Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general. Trump further argued that by tearing down Lee’s statues, it would pave the way for statues of our founding fathers to be removed.

"So this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” he asked then. He later said the removal of controversial statues should be left up to the community or civil authority “depending on where it is located.”

Americans disagree on the subject of whether or not Confederate statues should be displayed in public squares, and that is a reasonable debate to have. Biden, however, falsely claimed that Trump called white supremacists “very fine people” and made it a centerpiece of his campaign. When you read the full extent of Trump’s remarks, you not only see him say he was specifically speaking about Americans protesting the removal of Lee’s statue, but you hear a clear condemnation of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

“You had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly,” Trump said.

Trump never praised neo-Nazis as “very fine people.” He defended Americans who went to protest the tearing down of statues that they thought were historically significant. One does not have to agree with those protesters to know that Biden’s “restore the soul of the nation” slogan is based on a deeply deceptive lie about Trump. It was a cynical rhetorical strategy to convince Americans they would be responsible for the decay of our country’s soul, unless of course they supported him.

What’s worse is that many in the media never made efforts to correct Biden’s deception about Trump’s response to Charlottesville, allowing him to repeatedly state it even in his address at the Democratic National Convention. They had an image of Trump in their minds and were willing to disseminate Biden’s disinformation about Trump, facts be damned.

As president, Biden’s lies will impact the country for years to come and many in the media will turn a blind eye. He now has full control of the direction of the country with a Democratic Congress. Distinctions between men and women will be obscured in law. More babies will continue to be killed by abortion. Students will be taught the ahistorical theories about the American Revolution embedded in the 1619 project, breeding further hatred for our founding. And the right of conservatives to free expression will erode.

Many in the media zealously counted over 30,000 instances of President Trump’s “false or misleading” claims, oftentimes lecturing Trump voters about the importance of speaking truth to power during his term as president. Now it’s time for the media to speak truth to power while Biden is president, an office he attained by telling malicious lies.