Trump has lied about so many things, so blatantly, that we treat him differently from any other politician. The only reason that he is a potential presidential candidate (again) is because we have all forgotten what normal politics is. People continue to spew, “Biden is too old,” seemingly ignoring that Trump made up a massacre to help sell an Islamophobic policy. Ah, but who remembers that? 

For example, back when Hurricane Dorian made landfall in 2019,  it was the most intense cyclone to strike the Bahamas since 1935. With sustained wind speeds of 185mph, the category five hurricane left 70,000 people homeless and resulted in 5.1 billion dollars in damages. 

However, leading up to hitting the US mainland, President Biden, in one of his “trademark gaffes,” stated that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama. Soon, his own government would put a statement clarifying what states would actually be hit; in direct contradiction with the President’s inaccurate statement that Alabama would not be hit.

 Initially interpreted as a statement made with false information, the public took no notice of the discrepancy. Things changed when the President presented the public with a clearly edited map in preparation for the storm. 

Where the official print did not include Alabama in the affected area, someone had evidently taken a Sharpie and drew a small addition, just enough to include Alabama. Instead of backing down, admitting the mistake, or even blaming a faulty model, the President had doubled down. This was totally unprecedented. 

There was an immediate outcry from the media. The President can’t just do this, right? 

The mainstream media took turns dragging him through the mud, but in characteristic Biden fashion this was quickly outshadowed by the next ridiculous thing he did. You might have trouble remembering this, or maybe you have already caught on, but Biden didn’t do this. Trump did. 

Trump has done countless things like this that we all seem to have forgotten about. He threatened the Leader of North Korea with “fire and fury.” On his first day press secretary Sean Spicer told the world with a straight face that Trump had the largest inauguration crowd “period.” Kellyanne Conway created the “Bowling Green Massacre,” a fictitious incident she used to defend Trump’s islamphobic policies.

Though people have (fair) qualms with Biden’s age, we seem to be holding him to a different standard than we hold Trump to. If Biden had done anything similar to what Trump’s staff did he would be dragged through the mud by people on both sides of the political divide. Trump’s greatest accomplishment has been the total obliteration of the standards we hold politicians to while still being able to apply them to Democrats. When voters are picking between Trump and Biden, it shouldn’t have to come down to policy, age, or anything else that we used as quality control before. It should come down to who can be trusted to admit they were wrong, before scribbling ‘I’m right’ in Sharpie.