This week’s White House Report Card is a rare one that looks at the reality that America now essentially has two presidents, fading President Joe Biden and incoming President-elect Donald Trump.
For Biden, it is the beginning of the end of four mediocre years marked by inflation and inaction on his programs despite winning results on Capitol Hill. With the final 2024 presidential election results finally in, it is also the realization that he couldn’t even get his successor elected.
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For Trump, it was a triumphant week marked by bold picks for his Cabinet and an unyielding signal that he wasn’t just going to ignore the swamp and the media, but he was going to make them pay for their effort to deep-six his political career.
Secrets gives Biden a “C” for the week, though, because he appeared cordial and inviting to Trump during their two-hour White House meeting. His staff, however, deserves a failing grade for trash-talking Trump after he left.
We give Trump a “B+” for making good on his promise, backed by an electoral and popular vote mandate to blow up Washington.
Democratic pollster John Zogby also saw a difference favoring Trump. For Biden, he graded a “D” in large part because of Harris’s loss. And he gave Trump a “C” for showing that he planned to be an agent of change, though maybe too much of one. And Zogby also suggested that Democrats step back and give Trump what he wants instead of instinctively attacking in the model of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the incoming senator from that state.
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John Zogby
Biden Grade: D
Trump Grade: C
President Joe Biden’s ultimate legacy will be that his hand-picked successor underperformed in the 2024 election in every state and county in the country. Vice President Kamala Harris received over nine million fewer votes than her boss in 2020.
There are many theories on why, mainly from the Monday-morning quarterbacking consultants who participated in this humiliation. But suffice it to say that despite the many fears of a Trump second term, Americans did not feel they were better off than they were during Trump’s first term.
Plus, they were fed up with wokeness, being told the right way (translated to “the only way”) they were supposed to think, feel, and talk about things.
Biden has an opportunity to stand up to Israel and make good on his promise to withhold some arms shipments unless there was a ceasefire. In this he would be backed by a majority of U.S. voters, the United Nations, and leading NGOs like Human Rights Watch. He chose not too and to strongly align with a murderous regime.
President-elect Donald Trump, meanwhile, is hell-bent on tossing the Beltway salad. He was elected with a majority and a mandate and he is determined to spend his political capital being the agent of change. There are several Cabinet-level and advisory-level positions that are beyond controversial. The Senate will have to decide if they want to start out fighting the new administration and risk losing the common ground they have with the president-elect on issues upon which they agree.
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Democrats would be wise to not ‘Adam Schiff’ Trump and let him have his honeymoon. At least until they figure out who they are and how they would make things better.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book, Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should, was just released. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.