[Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]

In his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2021, President Biden promised that he would reverse the “state of chaos” that Americans, according to the president, had experienced during the Trump era. More than three years later, President Biden delivered his final State of the Union address on March 7^th before this year’s presidential election. He criticized his “predecessor” multiple times, without explicitly mentioning Donald Trump by name, in what sounded more like a no-holds-barred campaign speech for Biden’s likely rematch against Trump than a typical State of the Union address.

“The state of our union is strong and getting stronger,” President Biden proclaimed midway through his address, which began with a call for increasing U.S. support for Ukraine. America did not even come first in the constitutionally mandated State of the Union address that is supposed to be focused on the state of this country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin must have found it entertaining when President Biden delivered this message early in his address that was meant for Putin: “We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.”

President Biden walked away from Afghanistan when he ordered the hasty retreat that devolved into chaos and cost thirteen American service members their lives. President Biden left Americans behind and abandoned billions of dollars of weapons for the Taliban to use or sell. He also has bowed down to autocrats, especially the Chinese and Iranian dictators.

“I will always be a president for all Americans,” President Biden said towards the end of his address, after shouting much of the time as he delivered the most divisive, partisan State of the Union address in modern history.

President Biden would have us believe that the American people are much better off today than they were during the Trump administration era. The truth is, however, that America is incredibly weak on President Biden’s watch at home and abroad because of Biden’s disastrous domestic and foreign policies. And most Americans know it.

Forty-three percent of Americans surveyed in the most recent New York Time-Siena College poll responded that President Biden’s policies are hurting them personally, while only eighteen percent responded that the president’s policies are helping them personally. Only twenty-four percent responded that the United States is on the right track.

President Biden promised to restore calm and stability, economic prosperity for the middle class, and unity to America. He has portrayed himself as the guardian of democracy “against all threats foreign and domestic,” presumably including against his “predecessor.” Instead, President Biden has presided over chaos, rampant inflation hurting the average American, unprecedented division, and his own attack on democracy and core American values.

President Biden’s State of the Union address lasted a little over an hour. It took him about forty minutes before he addressed the issue at the top of voters’ minds – the border crisis for which he did not take any responsibility himself at all.

President Biden falsely blamed Republicans for the illegal immigration crisis and mounting chaos that his open border policies have created. From Day 1 of his administration, President Biden reversed former President Donald Trump’s phenomenally successful border security policies.

The overwhelming majority of the more than eight million illegal immigrants entering the United States on President Biden’s watch have been released and allowed to settle throughout the country while awaiting their asylum hearings years from now. The many violent criminals among these hordes of illegal immigrants admitted into the U.S. and then released have murdered, maimed, raped, robbed, and assaulted innocent Americans.

The young Georgia nursing student, Laken Hope Riley, would be alive today if her alleged killer, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant named Jose Ibarra, had been deported or at least detained. But Ibarra was free to roam through America’s communities due to the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policy and the sanctuary cities that let him go rather than turn him over to ICE after he had been arrested for other crimes.

President Biden only sought fit to mention Ms. Riley’s name, which he mispronounced, after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called out from the chamber for the president to say Ms. Riley’s name. After this prompting, he showed the button with “Say her name, Laken Riley” written on it that Rep. Greene had given him as he was walking towards the House chamber podium. President Biden could not resist including in his words of condolence to Ms. Riley’s parents that he had “lost children” too.

And after twice mispronouncing the name of “the innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” which Laken Riley’s mother called “pathetic,” the president appeared to trivialize this tragedy by asking a bizarre question: “But how many thousands of people are being killed by legals?” Is Biden’s apples to oranges comparison supposed to somehow make Ms. Riley’s parents feel better about what this one illegal immigrant, who never should have been in the U.S. in the first place, allegedly did to their daughter?

The president made things even worse when he said during a MSNBC interview a couple of days after his speech that he regrets having used the word “illegal” in describing the accused murderer of Laken Riley. He pledged not to “treat any of these people with disrespect.”

Illegal immigrants – especially those who go on to commit crimes in this country – deserve no respect. They deserve only our utter contempt, detention, and an immediate one-way ticket out of the country after serving time for their crimes. The Laken Riley Act, just passed by the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, would require ICE to issue detainers and take custody of illegal immigrants who commit theft-related crimes, including shoplifting. President Biden had a chance to express his support for this bill, but he ignored it instead.

President Biden claimed that the border crisis could be solved if the Republicans would work with him to pass the so-called “bipartisan” Senate security bill, which wrapped provisions on the border with increased aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

The president asserted that his “bipartisan” bill contained “the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen.” That is not even remotely the case. If he wants a bill with truly tough border security provisions, he and his fellow negotiators should have started with the border security bill that the House of Representatives passed months ago, H.R.2. But instead, the president and the Democrat-controlled Senate have treated this bill as dead on arrival.

President Biden, in a mocking tone, challenged those Republicans daring to object to his phony “bipartisan” bill that would have codified the admission of five thousand illegal immigrants a day on average and left his catch-and-release policy in place.

“Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh?” the president exclaimed. “What are you against?”

That is easy. The Senate bill that President Biden extolled was horrible. It would have tied a future president’s hands from taking real action to enforce the immigration laws already on the books.

Indeed, President Biden does not need a new border security bill to fix the border problem. He can immediately restore the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico program for asylum-seekers. He can work with the State of Texas to install more razor wire fencing along the border rather than try to take it down. And, most importantly, the president could issue new executive orders closing the border immediately, pursuant to the emergency authority granted to him by 8 U.S. Code § 1182(f). Using that authority, President Biden could suspend the entry of all or any classes of illegal immigrants into this country if he finds that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” But President Biden has done nothing except allow the current crisis to spiral out of control.

Turning to the economy in his State of the Union address, President Biden boasted that it is “literally the envy of the world.” Continuing his self-congratulation, he said: “Wages keep going up. Inflation keeps coming down. Inflation has dropped from 9 percent to 3 percent — the lowest in the world and trending lower.”

Unfortunately for President Biden, some stubborn facts get in the way of his spin.

President Biden forgot to mention, for example, that the 40-year high of nine percent inflation in June 2022 was the result of the reckless spending that he and the Democrat-controlled Congress unleashed. And Mr. Biden slid right by the fact that since he took office, consumer prices have risen overall by about seventeen percent.

Yes, wages keep going up. However, on President Biden’s watch, Americans’ wages have not kept up with Bidenflation. Real weekly earnings (calculated after adjusting for inflation) have decreased by 3.4 percent.

During President Biden’s first three years in office, grocery prices rose twenty-one percent while gas prices rose 33.1 percent. And rates for a thirty-year mortgage are over seven percent, a decades-old high.

American families are falling behind, spending over $11,000 more in 2023 than they did in 2021 to maintain their same standard of living. These American families are struggling day-to-day to make ends meet. Even Vice President Kamala Harris recognized the problem. “Most Americans are a $400 unexpected expense away from bankruptcy,” she admitted last year. But her boss remains unfazed.

President Biden showed no compassion during his State of the Union address for the desperation that every day Americans are feeling, which his and congressional Democrats’ out-of-control spending has caused. Instead, the president set out to convince us that we should be optimistic.

President Biden threw lots of red meat to his progressive left base during his address. He played the abortion card, rebuking the Supreme Court justices to their face over that issue and promising that he would sign a new law codifying Roe v. Wade if a supportive Congress were to be elected. He boasted about his continuing unilateral forgiveness of student loans, which defies a recent Supreme Court decision that placed such authority with Congress. The president promised all sorts of new government handouts, which would add to the ballooning deficit. And he engaged in class warfare against big corporations and the wealthy.

President Biden shamelessly cast himself as the guardian of democracy and American values. “Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today,” the fibber-in-chief declared as he trotted out his exaggerations about the January 6^th Capitol riot once again. “Restore trust in our institutions,” the president declared.

The Biden administration has destroyed trust in our institutions by weaponizing the justice system. This administration has used lawfare against Mr. Biden’s chief political opponent, arrested law-abiding, pro-life Americans protesting peacefully, attempted to stifle free speech at school board meetings and on social media, and spied on devout Catholics attending church. The Biden administration has also pushed forward toxic ideologies focused on group identity such as race or gender that are contrary to America’s core values, which are based on individual merit and freedoms. These toxic ideologies are poisoning the minds of the next generation in our public schools.

President Biden’s vision of the future is to fulfill Barack Obama’s goal of fundamentally transforming America into a socialist country that seeks retribution on behalf of the so-called “oppressed” against the so-called “oppressors.”