White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is denying that President Joe Biden is “in agreement” with any of former President Donald Trump’s policies.
During a White House press briefing on Thursday, a reporter from The New York Times noted, “There have been a number of issues in let’s say the last several weeks in which allies of the president are describing him as Trump-like. Less in terms of his personality and sort of tone and tenor obviously, but in terms of policy.”
He noted that a representative of the Cuban government voiced frustration with the Biden administration’s policy toward the island nation. He asked, “What’s the president’s reaction? And does he accept that in some areas of policy, he is in agreement with the former president?”
“Who are we talking about here? Who’s saying that the president’s like Trump?” Psaki asked.
The reporter noted, “There have been quotes in our paper, and lots of folks have, depending on the issue whether they are immigration advocates or folks who sort of watch Afghanistan, there have been numerous on the record descriptions of the president embracing [Trump’s policies].”
He also suggested that it is a “factual thing” that Biden agrees with some of Trump’s policies as he recalled that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the decision to maintain a pandemic-era immigration policy that was implemented under Trump.
Finally, he said that the French foreign minister compared Biden to Trump after he announced a deal to help Australia acquire U.S. nuclear-powered submarines. That agreement killed an earlier deal Australia had made to purchase $40 billion in French-made submarines.
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Psaki is asked why Biden is so much like Trump. Psaki is NOT happy with the question. pic.twitter.com/7CqKuNdDW9
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 30, 2021
Psaki responded by saying Trump made an agreement with the Taliban, which the nation’s top generals told Congress “led to the demoralization of the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government.”
“I would say [Biden] took a pretty different approach and ending a war that the former president didn’t end,” she added.
Addressing the immigration policy, Psaki said, “Title 42 is a public health requirement because we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Which, by the way, we would have made progress on had the former president actually addressed the pandemic and not suggest people inject bleach.”
“So I think we’re in a bit of a different place…I think people would be pretty hard-pressed to argue that the president has taken any aspect of the former president’s playbook and used it as a model of his own,” she added.