By Bo Erickson, Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump has invoked Joe Biden's name almost 900 times this year, a Reuters review shows, keeping his predecessor at the center of debate as Republicans fight to hold their fragile grip on Congress in November's midterm elections.
Trump has made Biden, a Democrat, his political target on average three times a day across speeches, comments and Truth Social postings, blaming him for problems ranging from
inflation and immigration to munitions shortages, even as the former president, 83 and battling Stage 4 cancer, has largely withdrawn from public life.
The tactic reflects Trump's effort to keep Americans focused on the perceived failures of the previous administration rather than on voters' concerns about his own presidency with just six weeks left until the November 3 midterm elections.
Democrats “delivered you four years of disaster, bedlam and death under sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump, 80, told the party faithful at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on September 9.
“Donald Trump always needs a foil and it's better to have a single person than a party,” said Republican strategist Ryan Williams. “He’s done this throughout his time in office. He can use it to try to deflect any problems he’s currently facing.”
The Reuters review examined Trump's references to Biden from January, when the 2026 election cycle began taking shape. The findings underscore Trump's effort to keep the focus on Biden as his own approval ratings have sagged, the war with Iran has dragged on, and the cost of living remains stubbornly high.
Since January 1, Trump has called out Biden by name at least 890 times, spanning almost 200 events and interviews and around 190 Truth Social posts this year, the Reuters review found.
He invoked Biden at least 210 times on the economy, 168 times on immigration and 138 times on foreign policy and national security matters, while also blaming him for a range of other domestic issues.
He has criticized Biden at events as varied as first lady Melania Trump’s movie premiere, the National Prayer Breakfast and the traditional Easter Egg Roll on the White House South Lawn. During July’s NATO meeting in Turkey, Trump set a record for the number of mentions in a single day – 16. He blamed Biden for a shortage of military munitions, the cost of housing and denigrating the steel industry.
While presidents often blame their predecessors – as Biden did Trump – Trump's focus on Biden 20 months into his second term stands out for both its persistence and volume.
“Joe Biden is the worst president in American history, and President Trump has spent every day cleaning up his mess and making the United States of America stronger than ever before,” said Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman defending Trump's repeated references to his predecessor.
T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden, declined to comment for this story.
Meghan Hays, a former senior Biden White House official, however, attacked what she called Trump's “obsession.”
“Nine hundred mentions in less than a year isn’t governing, it’s an obsession. Joe Biden beat him once and Trump still hasn’t gotten over it. He's more focused on re-litigating 2020 than lowering the cost of gas and groceries for the American people,” she said, referring to Biden's victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely claims was stolen from him.
ROWING BACK ON ECONOMY
In February, Trump told an interviewer he owned the economy. Now, with public opinion polls showing Americans souring on Trump’s economic stewardship, Trump is blaming affordability issues on Biden.
“I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by ‘TRUMP,’” the president posted on Truth Social last week.
Some Trump supporters at the midterm convention in Dallas told Reuters they believed that Biden was to blame for inflation 20 months after he left office. Opinion polls, however, suggest it is Trump who draws most Americans' ire over inflation.
Inflation soared to more than 9% during Biden's presidency, fueled in part by pandemic disruption to supply chains, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Biden administration's spending to stimulate the COVID-racked economy.
Trump won election mainly on his promise to bring down prices, but they have remained stubbornly high, in part because of his war on Iran. Averaging 4.95% a month during Biden's four years, year-on-year inflation has averaged 2.94% a month since Trump took office and stood at 3.4% last month.
“Politics is always about the future and never about the past, so blaming your predecessor does not work. Especially for an incumbent. He must defend his own record to help his party,” said veteran Republican strategist Charlie Black, who has sometimes criticized Trump.
IMMIGRATION
After the economy, immigration is the issue on which Trump most frequently invokes Biden.
As Trump's expanded deportation campaign drew nationwide criticism and protests this year, he repeatedly sought to shift responsibility to his predecessor, arguing that Biden's policies had enabled record levels of illegal immigration along the US-Mexico border.
After federal immigration agents killed two American citizens protesting in Minnesota in January, for example, Trump blamed the “open border policies of Biden” for “all of the time that we spend talking about Minnesota.”
The president talks about the high level of border crossings under Biden and the tougher Trump administration immigration policies so much that he recently acknowledged that his White House advisers were trying to get him off the topic.
“Even my speechwriters, they say, ‘Sir, nobody wants to hear about the border anymore. You've done it,’” Trump recounted in the Oval Office in August. “Biden couldn't do it,” he added.
IRAN, UKRAINE CONFLICTS
Under pressure to end the war on Iran he started nearly seven months ago, Trump has invoked Biden at least 37 times. He accuses his predecessor of not having been aggressive enough against Tehran during his 2021-2025 presidency and of “creating a monster with Iran” in 2015 with the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by then-President Barack Obama while Biden was vice president.
Biden's policy toward Iran was to increase economic pressure on Tehran, a position Trump has now adopted amid sporadic clashes with Iran.
Trump initially denied media reports that US stockpiles of missiles and interceptors were dwindling rapidly in the war, but in May, he started blaming Biden for the shortages.
“I'd like to have more (munitions) to be honest, but so much was given to Ukraine by Biden,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on July 27.
Trump has blamed Biden for international crises around the world at least 138 times. This ranges from Ukraine and Iran to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and being too soft on China.
PERSONAL JABS
Trump has also taken a number of personal jabs at Biden over his mental acuity and his use of the autopen to sign some documents, a practice used by many presidents.
Sitting at a picnic table and signing eggs at April's White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump told the group of children surrounding him that Biden “gave everything to the autopen because he was incapable of signing, let alone running a country.”
A favorite stop on the tour Trump gives guests at his “presidential walk of fame” near the White House Rose Garden is a display dedicated to Biden. While other presidents are represented by photos of themselves, Biden is represented by an image of an autopen.
Trump has invoked Biden even when addressing local issues such as the renovation of the Reflecting Pool on Washington's National Mall, arguing, without providing any evidence, that the project's problems stem from neglect during Biden's presidency or from reconstruction efforts that predated his return to office.
The pool now sits empty, two months after the initial renovation. Trump has blamed vandals for the project's problems, but the Justice Department acknowledged in August that recent "flawed" renovation work led to the pool's peeling, a problem tied to work undertaken during Trump's administration.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson, Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)
