President Joe Biden’s active presence on the internet, social media and cable TV last week topped his predecessor for the first time in five years, reports Axios.
Donald Trump “crowded out nearly every other news figure and topic” during his term in office and the 2016 election campaign, but as the Biden administration settles in he has retreated, “partly by choice and partly by being forced off the big platforms,” the news website says.
“Last week was the first time Biden had more cable news mentions than Trump,” Axios says, citing the Internet Archive Television News Archive. “He also drew bigger ratings for his inauguration than Trump did four years ago.”
Stories about Biden “generated 36 million more interactions (likes, comments, shares) on social media than Trump last week,” Axios says, noting that during the 2020 campaign, Biden was never within 18 million interactions of Trump.”
Since being sworn in less than a week ago, “Biden has signed a blitz of executive orders aiming to undo what he regards as harmful and intolerant aspects of Trump’s legacy,” says The Guardian, pointing to the new president’s reversal of Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the U.S. military.
Still, Biden has a daunting task ahead of him, just to undo as much as possible of the governmental wreckage Trump left in his wake.
“From headline-grabbing policies like caging children at the southern border to stealth rollbacks of climate and environmental regulations, politicizing the role of science and leaving hundreds of key political appointments vacant during a pandemic, the consequences of the Trump administration’s governing philosophy will take swift, sustained and systemic efforts to mend,” says the New York Times.
During the last months of his presidency, Trump turned changing federal rules “into a sport,” the Times says, ’s numerous rule changes, particularly during the last months of his presidency, “finalizing more rules in his last year than any other modern president and even bypassing statutory waiting periods.”
Between Election Day 2020 and Biden’s inauguration — about two and a half months — the Trump administration issued 53 new rules, including so-called “midnight rules,” ordered without fanfare because they tend to be politically controversial or unpopular.
These range from expanding methods of execution for condemned federal convicts, to allowing companies in the “gig economy” to avoid providing their workers benefits and safety protections, to “allowing federal contractors to claim a religious exemption to discriminate in hiring,” the Times Says.
“The Trump show has wound down because he stopped being president, but also because he was banned from major social media platforms,” notes Axios.
“Trump’s dormant Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts have turned off his stream of consciousness — and the ensuing reaction — for the first time in years.”
