Stephen Miller, the noted xenophobic former adviser to former President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News Thursday evening, where he attempted to argue that current President Joe Biden had a good “hand” dealt to him before assuming office — a claim that ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans likely unnecessarily died under Trump’s watch during the coronavirus pandemic.
“No president in history has been dealt a better hand on day one than President Biden,” Miller said on Fox News’ “Hannity” program.
Miller went on to tout what he considered Trump’s major accomplishments, suggesting that they have helped Biden since he took office earlier this year.
“Think about what President Trump left him and what it’s become,” Miller said. “He left him a Middle East that was at the dawn of a new peace, the most secure border in American history, energy abundance — and we had more energy than we knew what to do with.”
Stephen Miller: No President in history has been dealt a better hand on day one than President Biden. pic.twitter.com/0gcSY26oZ8
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 9, 2021
“We had an economy that was primed to roar,” the former Trump adviser added. “We had a viable path towards peace in Afghanistan. All of this and more was left at the doorstep for Joe Biden.”
Of course, much of what Miller said in the segment was either exaggerated or just plain false.
In regards to the Middle East, the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was simply a mere formality of relations between the two countries that had already existed for several years.
The Trump administration also backed Israel’s ongoing campaign of dispossession in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank — which undoubtedly set the stage for the brutal crackdown on Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and the devastating war on Gaza.
A study by Brown University found that civilian deaths in Afghanistan were highest during several years of the Trump presidency. “From 2017 through 2019, civilian deaths due to U.S. and allied forces’ airstrikes in Afghanistan dramatically increased,” according to the research. “In 2019 airstrikes killed 700 civilians — more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war in 2001 and 2002.”
The peace deal signed with the Taliban during the Trump presidency also failed to bring an end to violence by the U.S., Afghan government or the Taliban.
In regards to the economy, Trump was “the first president to leave office with a loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover,” according to economist Dean Baker.
However, the most obvious omission by Miller was the coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death rate in the U.S. at its highest during the weeks as Trump left office and Biden assumed the presidency.
By January 20, 2021, 24.5 million Americans had tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 413,000 Americans had died because of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. There were reportedly more than 3,050 new coronavirus deaths per day, on average, by the time Biden was inaugurated, a number that has since dropped to 194 deaths per day.
Many experts have noted that, along with the disastrous U.S. public health care system, the former president bears much of the blame for the virus’s devastation over the past year, as he continuously lied to the public during the crisis, discouraged mask usage and social distancing, and wrongly told Americans they had nothing to worry about, comparing COVID-19 to the flu (in spite of knowing otherwise).
“It’s important to note that Stephen Miller sometimes forgets that most humans view death, disease and despair as bad things,” said Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“Biden was literally handed a country suffering from a deadly pandemic and a struggling economy that had just endured an outright insurrection,” added Rantt Media co-founder Ahmed Baba, “but go off Stephen.”
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