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Notes -
The worst decisions were mostly made at the state level, where Trump indeed was not in power. Trump made some bad decisions, but the ones Biden would have made (and indeed did make when he had the chance) were worse.
The question of "botching the COVID-19 response" assumes there was a useful response that could have stopped COVID-19. Once the European strain was here, there was not (and it probably was never possible to close the US enough to block that). All the botching, then, was in the direction of "too much response". And while Trump wasn't great on that, he's better on it than any Democrat said to be in the running, unless you count RFK Jr. Biden was terrible, Kamala is part of the Biden administration, and Newsom and Whitmer were worse.
And I think it's easier to remember the lockdown enthusiasts as overreaching than it is the relatively laissez-faire Trump/Republican approach, regardless of whichever was nominally better at addressing whether the local Octogenerians were sent to early graves slightly or moderately faster than usual. Biden's tribe backed a lot of disruptions to average living that seem like an utterly insane void in hindsight, whilst regardless of how much emphasis you put onto Omicron and the Vaccines for the nullification of COVID the red tribe's stance that it was largely nothingburger seems to have born out.
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