We have two choices when the Democrats and the media assert President Donald Trump’s actions are unprecedented in anything other than the pace, volume, and effectiveness. Either they truly believe the world began on January 20, 2025, or they think you are stupid enough to believe so yourself.
To hear Democrats, progressives, and their allies in the media tell it, President Donald Trump has undertaken and continues to undertake a litany of “unprecedented” actions in his second term on matters large and small. In April, The New York Times asked thirty five historians, “Are Donald Trump’s Actions Truly Unprecedented?” In May, Reuters claimed that the President had “unleashed executive authority,” citing the fact that he had issued more orders than any Chief Executive outside of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “It amounts to an extraordinary, unprecedented, dangerous assertion of almost unlimited executive or presidential authority,” they quoted Kenneth Mayer, a professor of American politics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Sharece Thrower, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University who studies the executive branch, said recent U.S. presidents had been more circumspect of legal boundaries when issuing orders to avoid litigation, which could erode public trust. That appears not to be the case for Trump.” “They are willing to push things even if it invites judicial challenges,” she said. Last month, Axios published, “Behind the Curtain: The most unprecedented presidency in 250 years.” They too cited the volume of executive orders and added the number of declared emergencies, nine. Also of concern to Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen was the “free-press crackdown,” “seizing Congressional purse strings,” tariffs, “overriding the Constitution,” “purging watchdogs and civil servants,” “eroding DoJ independence,” “eroding Fed independence,” “wartime powers in peace time,” “pay me capitalism,” “targeting Big Law,” “punishing universities,” “rewriting health and vaccine policy,” “profiteering,” and “January 6 pardons,” amounting to a quite a list and I’m certain other detractors would add even more.
In principle, this sounds like a huge deal – if you assume the world began when President Trump retook office on January 20 and ignore almost everything that happened over the past several decades, much of which many of these same individuals weren’t nearly as concerned about at the time. If one was truly concerned about the use of wartime powers in peace time, they should look no further than President Bill Clinton and his Attorney General Janet Reno authorizing the use of an illegal chemical agent against the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and literally rolling in tanks to smash through the walls of the compound despite their being no imminent threat whatsoever. Though they insisted the goal was to smoke the recalcitrant cult out after 51 days of a stand off, the tear gas they used was classified as a war crime by the Geneva Conventions and it would be unlawful to use it against terrorists in an actual war. It also had a long history of catching fire confined to a small space and not surprisingly, the compound burned to the ground before the vast majority of people inside including women and children could escape. As a result, 76 people died in the blaze – only to have their own government bizarrely claim that they weren’t killed by the tanks or the gas. Instead, they committed mass suicide by fire for some reason, when they had guns in the compound and could’ve simply shot themselves rather than burning to death and hadn’t done so in the fifty prior days they were under siege. Perhaps even worse, no one was ever held accountable for any reason, meaning a Democrat President was able to commit war crimes against US citizens with barely a peep from the media.
If Waco seems like ancient history even though President Clinton has spoken at every Democrat National Convention since, perhaps you’d like a more recent reference point. In that case, President Obama used war powers and overrode the Constitution at the same time, authorizing drone strikes against US citizens that killed at least four people who were never provided any due process and were not convicted of any crimes. In fact, his Administration published a “playbook” with instructions how and when to do so, one which essentially put him in charge above and beyond the Constitution or the Courts and one which does so even if others do not agree the target is a threat, even if they are outside a warzone. As Politico reported in 2016, “President Barack Obama has to personally approve the killing of a U.S. citizen targeted for a lethal drone strike outside combat areas, according to a policy Obama adopted in 2013. The president also is called upon to approve drone strikes against permanent residents of the U.S. and when ‘there is a lack of consensus’ among agency chiefs about whom to target, but in other cases he is simply ‘apprised’ of the targeting decision, the newly-disclosed document shows.” Incredibly, these strikes could be authorized against US citizens even if there was the potential to capture them alive for charging and trial. While officials had previously claimed people were only targeted when capture wasn’t feasible,” the actual policy adds the caveat “at the time,” meaning “an assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of the operation.” Rather than call this what it is – a massive abuse of power, dare I say unprecedented – Politico chose to spin it on President Obama’s behalf claiming, “That suggests the U.S. can go forward with a strike even if there’s reason to believe it might be possible to capture someone at some later point, perhaps if he transits between one place and another. On the other hand, given that those targeted are considered involved in imminent terrorist activities, a delay could potentially cost lives.” This sounds reasonable enough, but who made these decisions? The Obama Administration and the Administration alone with no oversight or safeguards of any kind. If that wasn’t enough to make journalists suspicious all wasn’t as it seemed, it also appears he intentionally hid this policy from scrutiny until a Freedom of Information Act request eventually forced its release. “When Obama approved the guidance in May 2013, the White House issued a fact sheet about the policy, but declined to release the document itself—even in a redacted form.”
Perhaps this shouldn’t have been surprising from a President who brazenly declared “We Can’t Wait” and argued that his pen and his phone entitled him to bypass Congress on the budget, immigration, and just about everyone else in yet another unprecedented display of raw power. When he sought to unilaterally extend the power of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions, the media declared bypassing Congress to be “landmark,” “momentous,” and “historic.” As The Guardian reported after noting it was a “departure for the EPA, which generally has focused on curbing emissions from specific smoke stacks,” “Obama had initially sought to deal with climate change through Congress. But after that effort collapsed, and with Republicans in Congress uniformly opposed to cutting carbon emissions – or even acknowledging climate change was occurring – Obama decided last year to use his executive authority to cut carbon pollution.” He used the same authority to tackle the budget deficit without Congress, “From the day I took office, I’ve said we’re going to comb the federal budget, line by line, to eliminate as much wasteful spending as possible… We can’t wait for Congress to act — we can’t wait for them to get our fiscal house in order and make the investments necessary to keep America great. That’s why today, I’m signing an Executive Order that will build on our efforts to cut waste and promote more efficient spending across the government — we’re cutting what we don’t need so that we can invest in what we do need.” Did the media wonder if this was unprecedented and did the experts bemoan bypassing Congressional power of the purse? No, far from it. ABC News promoted the effort as “Obama Defends Budget: Not Going to Run Up the Credit Card.” President Obama did much the same on immigration law, leading the The Hill to report on how Democrats “praise[ed] Obama’s ‘courageous’ first steps.” “Democrats hailed President Obama’s move Thursday to halt deportations for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.”
Of course, President Joe Biden had his own problems with executive orders, unilaterally extending his authority to eviction moratoriums, student loans, and vaccines on matters that were all subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court. The eviction moratorium is perhaps the most instructive given he was well aware he lacked the authority in the first place and even said so in public. In June 2021, the Supreme Court expressed skepticism that the President could unilaterally prevent landlords from evicting tenants who were no longer paying their rent, but the order was supposed to expire the following month and the Justices allowed it to remain in place under the assumption that it wouldn’t be renewed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh singled this out in particular, writing he was only voting to keep the measure in place “because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution” than an immediate reversal. Three days after the order expired, however, President Biden under pressure from Democrats and progressive groups attempted to extend it on August 3 even though just a day earlier, one of his advisors, Gene Sperling said it was not possible to do so, claiming the Administration “has double, triple, quadruple checked” the legal authority and could not find it anywhere because “Congressional authorization” was needed. Previously, the President himself put it this way, “Any call for a moratorium based on the Supreme Court’s recent decision is likely to face obstacles” and the White House itself agreed, claiming they have “been unable to find legal authority for a new” moratorium, and yet they went ahead anyway. Perhaps even more incredibly, when the Supreme Court ruled against it as expected, in a ruling even NPR admitted was “all but written in June,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki pretended none of this ever happened, claimed to be “disappointed” in the inevitable, and decried the ruling as harming people, “As a result of this ruling,” she said in a statement, “families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.”
Alas, the pandemic is instructive on more than executive authority. Though some of the ludicrous measures began under President Trump in 2020, there is no doubt that the politicization of health and vaccines in the United States including major changes to our understanding of both reached entirely new levels under President Biden. Beyond the vaccine mandate itself and the fact that the Administration greatly exaggerated the ability of the vaccine to both prevent infections and spread as opposed to reducing critical cases, the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control went well beyond the dictates of science and best practices in public health and did so for years. While President Biden had promised to reopen schools during the campaign, he went on to collude with the teacher’s unions to keep them shuttered, allowing them to review supposedly objective measures and giving them something close to veto power over the fate of our children. As The New York Post reported in May 2021, “the powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show.” Then CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walenksy along with her top advisor and other administration officials collaborated, in secret, on school reopening guidelines issued in February, even including language from the teacher’s unions making its way into the final recommendations. “Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” gushed the American Federation of Teacher’s “senior director of health issues,” Kelly Tratner, in an email on February 1. “We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,” she continued. “We believe our experiences on the ground can inform and enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in future guidance documents.”
More recently, we learned the extent at which the same administration was conspiring with companies to infringe upon the free speech rights of Americans in a shall we say unprecedented manner. Previously, we were aware that the FBI was embedded at Twitter to police health and election related speech at the President’s request and that no one in the Administration said or did anything when The New York Post and other outlets were improperly silenced during the campaign. Over the past two weeks, we learned that they were also silencing people on YouTube. After an investigation by Republican members of Congress, Google Attorney Daniel Donovan issued a statement, admitting the Biden Administration had “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.” “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies. While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative user-generated content.” He went on to say, “it was unacceptable and wrong” for President Biden to “dictate” in these matters. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said much the same shortly after the election.
Nor was President Biden’s anti-free speech efforts confined to social media. Late last year we found that the Administration had also targeted faith-based private schools and universities. As Fox News reported in November 2024, “A report showed that nearly 70% of enforcement actions executed by the Biden administration’s Education Department targeted faith-based and career schools. According to a press release published by the American Principles Project (APP), they drew on newly obtained data finding that nearly 70 percent of the Department of Education’s (ED) enforcement actions dealt with faith-based and career schools, even though those schools represent less than 10 percent of students in the US. APP Policy Director Jon Schweppe said the Democrats have been ‘busy weaponizing every part of the federal government to target their opponents’ for the past four years.” “While major assaults from agencies like the Department of Justice have taken most of the headlines, we should not ignore similarly corrupt efforts in other agencies as well,” he continued, alluding to the reality that President Trump was charged three times with multiple felonies by President Biden’s Justice Department. “As our report details, the Biden-Harris Department of Education has been engaged in a long-running scheme to punish Christian colleges that are ideologically opposed to the left’s agenda. The unfair targeting of these institutions has been egregious, and it needs to stop immediately.”
With all this and more in mind, we have two choices when the Democrats and the media assert President Donald Trump’s actions are unprecedented in anything other than the pace, volume, and effectiveness. Either they truly believe the world began on January 20, 2025, or they think you are stupid enough to believe so yourself. Either way, the only thing unprecedented is either their naivety about the past or their opinion of the average person’s low intelligence.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 