Border crisis and skyrocketing inflation: US House speaker sums up Biden’s term
The legacy of outgoing US President Joe Biden will be defined by “many failures,” US House speaker Mike Johnson said in a post on X on Wednesday.
One of them was “engineering the worst border crisis in US history, bringing terrorists and violent illegals into our communities,” Johnson wrote.
According to data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), more than 300,000 people were illegally crossing into the US from Mexico at the peak of the influx in the winter of 2022, with the number subsiding to around 100,000 since then.
Biden’s other failure was “fueling skyrocketing inflation,” which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, the house speaker said.
He also blamed the president for “weaponizing the [Department of Justice] to target political opponents,” apparently referring to the criminal cases launched against US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Pardoning his son despite saying he never would, and giving murderers and rapists clemency” was another of Biden’s blunders, according to Johnson.
Hunter Biden had been convicted of lying about his long-standing drug addiction when buying a handgun and also pleaded guilty to three felonies and six misdemeanor tax offenses. However, the president pardoned his son in December, claiming that he was prosecuted “selectively and unfairly” because of his familial ties.
The 81-year-old Biden was also “hiding from the American people his mental decline,” the speaker noted.
Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement amid pressure from his own Democratic Party not to seek reelection after a poor performance during his first debate with Trump.
President Biden’s legacy will be defined by his many failures:• Engineering the WORST border crisis in U.S. history, bringing terrorists and violent illegals into our communities • WEAPONIZING DOJ to target political opponents• FUELING skyrocketing inflation through…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 16, 2025
Johnson’s critique also included two foreign policy flops by the outgoing president, “orchestrating the disastrous withdrawal [of US forces] from Afghanistan” in 2021 and “emboldening enemies through a policy of appeasement.”
During his speech at the Department of State on Monday, Biden, who will be succeeded by Trump on January 20, claimed that “the US is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago” under his leadership.
“America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger,” he insisted, suggesting that the fact that nations like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have been growing closer together during his term was a sign of their weaknesses.
