When Biden took office, COVID-19 was two weeks past its winter peak, the U.S. was administering over a million vaccine doses a day, and the economy had bounced back. Biden nonetheless falsely said that he had inherited the “worst crisis since the Great Depression” and claimed that the administration was launching a vaccination campaign from scratch, and he told Americans to “mask up” for just 100 days in keeping with his campaign vow to “shut down the virus.” Yet we’re now in the midst of a COVID-19 surge, and more than a hundred days since his first hundred days, the CDC still maintains masking guidance — even for the fully vaccinated.

Biden similarly has attempted to blame Trump for the mounting fiasco in Afghanistan. And while it’s true that Trump made the initial agreement to withdraw and wind down the troop presence, it was Biden’s role as commander in chief to oversee that withdrawal. It’s true that the baseline assumption on both sides of the “stay” vs. “leave” debate was that leaving Afghanistan would be chaotic in the short term. That events have unfolded in a way that’s significantly worse than even these low baseline expectations is quite the testament to Biden’s incompetence. Biden cannot blame Trump for, say, abandoning Bagram Air Base. Leaving was never going to be smooth, but it could have been done in a way that would ensure that Americans and our allies were out before the withdrawal. And it could have been done without today’s bloody catastrophe.