CLAY: One of the big flaws I think at its essence of Joe Biden’s presidency is he has bought into a historical fallacy. You guys all know that I am a super history nerd. Have you noticed that Biden is regularly talking about how he’s meeting with historians and how those historians are constantly influencing his opinions and also even the places where he’s choosing to speak?

He really believes, I think, Joe Biden has been convinced in some way that America right now is basically America during the World War II or America during the Civil War, and I don’t think those cultural analogies fit at all relatively to what is the reality. And so, I want you to listen, if you’re wondering where is this coming from, this is one of the historians, Michael Beschloss saying he told Biden America today is like when it was in 1860 and 1940. Listen to this.

“He realized that this is an historic moment”: Michael Beschloss discusses private meeting he and other historians held with President Biden, for nearly two hours, on the state of American democracy. https://t.co/RdYLvfum24 pic.twitter.com/cWa1ym6jQZ

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 2, 2022

CLAY: Now, look. History doesn’t repeat in rhymes. So, anybody who is saying, oh, this is just like — situations are never the exact same. But one reason why I think Joe Biden is misreading virtually everything in his presidency is ’cause he’s bought into what his historians are telling him, that this is 1860 right before the Civil War starts.

By default, that would make Joe Biden Abraham Lincoln. And this is 1940 right before World War II starts. By default, that would make Joe Biden FDR. Joe Biden is Jimmy Carter. And that historical analogy is important here. Jimmy Carter was basically an accidental president. He got elected in 1976 because of Watergate, because of what Nixon did, because of the overall culture and climate there, because Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. That is why Jimmy Carter became president.

Jimmy Carter was a president as a result of Watergate. I would argue to you that Joe Biden is president because of covid. That’s the only reason he became president. And the historical analogy, if you want to repeat it, is not that he’s Lincoln or FDR; it’s that he’s Jimmy Carter, and covid was the twenty-first century version of Watergate. Covid occurred — if covid happens any year other than, probably, a presidential year, I think Donald Trump wins with ease.

And I imagine many of you out there are nodding along because when covid arrived here in March of 2020, Democrats immediately used covid as their safety valve, their opportunity to beat Trump by blaming him for everything associated with covid. The reality is — and I really mean this — sound like Joe Biden when I say, “I really mean this, guys” — any American president, none of them would have done much different in terms of the overall numbers with covid.

I would say the one benefit of Joe Biden being president, if you really press me and said, “Hey, Clay, what’s a benefit of Joe Biden being president right now?” It’s if Trump were still in office, every single covid death would still be on the front page of the newspaper. I’m not even kidding about this. I believe that — remember when the New York Times, a hundred thousand people died with covid and they made their entire front — this was around Memorial Day, if I remember correctly, the entire front page of their newspaper, just names of people that had died with covid?

They did almost nothing when a million people died with covid. Again, with covid. Because by that point Joe Biden was in office. So, they tried to blame Trump for everything related to covid. And last winter, when we had the highest numbers of covid cases that have ever occurred in this country well over a year into Biden’s administration after he claimed that he was going to solve all the covid issue, they just pretended to a large extent that the president had no authority because too many people hadn’t gotten the covid shots.

They shifted the blame from, “Oh, this is all the president’s fault” to, “Oh, this is just the fault of the unvaccinated,” even though we know that the pandemic of the unvaccinated was a statistical and data-based lie. So, Biden misreading where the country is, and his administration, his advisers are based on people like this idiot historian comparing him, effectively, to Abraham Lincoln and FDR. Biden’s an accidental president. He doesn’t have to save the country.

He just has to act normal, and he can’t even act normal. He’s showing up and delivering speeches as if we are in the middle of the Civil War, World War II, when his entire party controls, effectively, all the levers of government. And so, if we’re in danger, it’s actually not because of the Civil War or because of World War II. It’s because of the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the Biden administration.

The idea that you could lecture us about democracy being in danger when your own Department of Justice is raiding the private residence of your chief political rival, it boggles my mind that this could even be occurring. What’s a bigger threat to democracy? 18 months ago, a bunch of people got angry and walked into the Capitol and most of the people went into the capital took selfies of themselves and posted it on social media?

Or the Department of Justice of the chief political rival of the president of the United States raiding and conducting a prosecutorial investigation to potentially lead your chief political rival out in handcuffs with a bunch of trumped-up charges over where documents are stored? Which is the bigger issue?

Now, it’s clearly the Department of Justice for the first time in its history raiding the chief political rival of the current sitting president. It’s not even a difficult argument to make. But the argument is they want Trump back on the scene because Joe Biden is an accidental president based on covid, and he’s trying to become an accidental president twice by running against Trump.

Trump’s not on the ballot in 2022. They are so desperate to avoid having to take responsibility and acknowledge their failures that they are trying to put Trump back on the ballot. Remember, for the first year of his presidency Biden wouldn’t even mention Trump’s name. He mentioned him last night.