I don’t think you can blame Trump for the division in the country. For exploiting it: sure. But he didn’t create it.
I think that Democrats seriously misread the temperature of the country after the 2020 election. They thought they were granted a progressive mandate when really the voters wanted stability and competence with perhaps incremental progress on certain key issues. All evidence points in this direction, starting with the 2018 midterms when a slate of moderate candidates gave them a House majority (despite all the noise about a few celebrity progressive candidates). The moderate labor Democrat Biden was the nominee over Sanders and Warren, etc.
The messed up political system that forces the Dems to bundle the disparate measures together is the main culprit, and navigating that with only 50 senators is really hard.
50 senators combined with silly filibuster rules and Republican/Sinema/Manchin exploitation of the rules is the hand grenade the Dems are dealing with.
"We're eight months into this pandemic, and Donald Trump still doesn't have a plan to get this virus under control.
I do."
The anti-vaccine crowd at first pointed to lacking FDA approval and once that came, refused due to possible 'long term side effects'. I'm unfamiliar with any infamy around long-term side effects of past vaccines, so I see this as something of an excuse. It's just easier to blame the President who promised to get it under control, isn't it? But is it fair?
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-ap-f...
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize his response to the pandemic without making things up.
The current thinking is that mutations are most likely to occur in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but vaccines are less effective in those with malfunctioning immune systems.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
I'll leave you with another Biden quote from October 2020: "220,000 Americans dead. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who's responsible for not taking control — in fact, not saying, I take no responsibility, initially — anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America."
We're up to 900K deaths now. Is it fair to blame Biden for failing to get it under control? Probably not, but he never hesitated to blame his predecessor. Politics is never fair.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...
One time he failed to clean it up was the very famous time he referred to getting disinfectant into the body as a COVID remedy, although he never literally said the oft-repeated phrase 'inject bleach'. After doctors were left condemning his comments, he said that he was being sarcastic, which I think is non-sensical given the subject matter (i.e., in the middle of the a pandemic, during a press conference surrounded by doctors, POTUS wants to go spit-balling on potential remedies and get all sarcastic on... disinfectants & their applicability to this virus).
As far as presidential responsibility for COVID deaths go, I think things are a bit different now owing to personal responsibility. Since we have vaccines now, should you refuse the vaccine and then die from the virus can you really blame POTUS for your death? Biden took the unusual step of reneging on his promise against vaccine mandates to do just that later once there was a new wave of deaths in August 2021. I give him credit for casting aside the obvious political implications of reneging on a promise and that of a obviously unpopular mandate, as well. To then blame this same POTUS for more deaths seems especially unfair. Biden and his medical advisors know the truth that this virus just won't 'go away' as Trump would like to say with a flick of his wrist in its early days, and that we will have to get bare-knuckled about it or suffer more deaths from evermore mutations.
While the Supreme Court (which isn't tasked with this same security role) decided against him on this order, as the executive it was reasonable for him to attempt to use this tool to gain control of COVID spread.
Given the divided, political state of our country and seeing that the COVID outbreak has taken an even worse upswing now, I personally feel like he did the right thing here. You'll note that I was not opining on the legal nature of the move. Other presidents have made orders without knowing their legality when the circumstances call for it. Lincoln and habeas corpus comes to mind.
What federal law did he ignore?
The rise in gas prices wasn't a coincidence or due to Biden's actions. OPEC (which includes such wonderful actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia) intentionally reduced production and raised prices in part to punish Biden's admin for working against authoritarian nations.