BIDEN PRESIDENCY = OBAMA 2021

George Carlin, America’s late, great comedian, so accurately noted, “It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it.”

With the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, “Our Gang” is back in town.

The facts are in the faces and the numbers. 

Making it clear which direction the nation is heading, Joe Biden’s picks for top positions inside his White House have all held positions during the Obama administration.

It is not a new administration: it’s “Obama 2021.”

1. Antony Blinken. Blinken was selected to be Secretary of State. He served as Deputy Secretary of State during President Obama’s second term in office. Blinken will head the department “with a group of former career diplomats and veterans of the Obama administration,” according to the Associated Press.Biden said this group “embodies my core belief that America is strongest when it works with our allies.” (Or, as we see it, considering that by their deeds you shall know them… more like “partners in crime.”)
2. Salman Ahmed. Ahmad will be named Director of Policy Planning for the State Department. He served in the Obama National Security Council. An AP report said that five of the 11 picks for the State Department are either people of color or LGBTQ.
3. Ron Klain. Klain will be Biden’s Chief of Staff. He was a longtime aide to Biden during the Obama presidency and was the White House’s Ebola Czar. 
4. Xavier Becerra. Becerra is Biden’s pick to lead Health and Human Services. Most recently, he served as California’s attorney general and played a key role in passing ObamaCare. 
5. John Kerry. Kerry was selected by Joe Biden to be his Climate Czar. He had succeeded Hillary Clinton in President Obama’s White House as Secretary of State. Kerry declared, “We need to all move together because today very few are on a trajectory of the steep reductions needed to meet even current goals, let alone the targets we need to avert catastrophic damage.” 
6. Jen Psaki. Psaki is the new White House Press Secretary. She served as the head spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department during the Obama administration. She recently got into a heated back and forth with a reporter over some members of Biden’s family deciding against wearing masks during post-inauguration celebrations. Reuters reported that Biden signed 15 executive actions on his first day and put in place a mask mandate for anyone on federal property. A Fox News reporter pointed out that members of Biden’s family were not wearing masks on federal land.

Psaki said, “I think, Steve, he was celebrating an evening of a historic day in our country, and certainly he signed the mask mandate because it’s a way to send a message to the American public about the importance of wearing masks, how it can save 10s of thousands of lives. We take a number of COVID precautions, as you know here, in terms of testing, social distancing, mask-wearing ourselves, as we do every single day. But I don’t know that I have more for you on it than that.” 

TRENDPOST: We have noted in previous issues of the Trends Journal the numerous examples of politicians and “health officials” who disregard the virus guidelines they put into place for We the Little People of Slavelandia. Again, “It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it. 

7. Janet Yellen. Yellen was selected to be Secretary of Treasury. She served as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve under President Obama and was criticized by Republicans for allegedly delaying rate hikes to give Hillary Clinton an edge in the 2016 election against then-candidate Donald Trump. 

Former Representative Scott Garrett told Yellen at a hearing that “perception is reality… And the public perception is that the Fed’s independence is nothing more than a myth and the Fed has an unacceptable, cozy relationship with the Obama administration and with higher-ups in the Democratic party.” 

8. Lloyd Austin. Austin was selected by Biden to be Secretary of Defense. Before this, he spent three years under President Obama in charge of U.S. military operations in the Middle East. Austin oversaw the U.S. backing of Saudi Arabia during the military campaign against Yemen, according to the Huffington Post. Austin also sits on several corporate boards including Raytheon Technologies, one of America’s largest military contractors.

Yemen, which is the region’s poorest country, has been fighting a disastrous war since 2015 that was launched from Washington, D.C. by Saudi Arabia. The war has killed more than 112,000 people and has brought on the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, according to the U.N. 

9. Merrick Garland. Garland is Biden’s pick for Attorney General. He was nominated by President Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 to fill the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died earlier in the year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Garland would not be approved by the Senate because it was an election year.
10. Tom Vilsack. Vilsack was Secretary of Agriculture under the Obama administration and Joe Biden put him back in the same job.
11. Neera Tanden. Tanden was selected by Biden to become Director of the Office of Management Budget. She was one of the designers of ObamaCare and has been the president of the Center of American Progress. 
12. Isabel Guzman. Guzman, Biden’s pick for Administrator of the Small Business Administration, was the former Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Small Business Administration during the Obama administration.
13. Avril Haines. Haines was picked to become Director of National Intelligence. She was Deputy National Security Advisor in the Obama administration, which, according to Democracy Now!, authorized drone strikes to “carry out targeted extrajudicial assassinations.”

John Kiriakou, the CIA whistleblower, told the show, “We know that Avril Haines, at the NSC, was in charge of determining whether it was legal or illegal to place people on [Former CIA Director] John Brennan’s kill list. We know that in almost all cases that she said it was legal to put these names on the kill list, and people were subsequently killed by drone, including American citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. They were American citizens who had never been charged with a crime. They had never faced their accusers in a court of law. There was no due process for them. She’s never had to answer for that.”

14. Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Thomas-Greenfield was selected to become U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She served as President Obama’s top diplomat who oversaw African affairs from 2013 to 2017. 
15. Cecilia Rouse. Rouse was selected to serve as Chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors. She served as a Council of Economic Advisors member during the Obama administration. Rouse most recently served as Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. 
16. Alejandro Mayorkas. Mayorkas is Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security. He is a DHS veteran who also served as the department’s Deputy Secretary during President Obama’s second term.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Republican senators at a hearing last week raised questions about a past Inspector General report that accused Mayorkas of personally intervening “to benefit wealthy and politically connected foreign investors seeking EB-5 visas.” He was accused of having the “appearance of favoritism and special access” for some applicants, the report said.

17. Denis McDonough. McDonough is now Biden’s choice for Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He served as Obama’s deputy national security adviser and was the White House chief of staff during Obama’s second term 
18. Jennifer Granholm. Granholm was selected to become Secretary of Energy. The former Michigan governor worked with the Obama administration during the challenges with the auto industry. Politico reported that her selection could help President Biden win over some blue-collar voters.