When Donald Trump left office in January 2021, critics cataloged his administration’s many controversial actions: family separations at the border, attacks on the free press, political purges, and unyielding support for Israeli military operations. His return to power in 2025 revived these policies, generating fresh waves of outrage across mainstream media outlets.

What often goes unmentioned, however, is an uncomfortable truth: many of Trump’s most criticized actions follow precedents established during Democratic administrations.

This pattern reveals how presidential power has expanded across party lines, with each administration building upon and extending authorities claimed by their predecessors. The media’s selective attention to these abuses – based largely on which party controls the White House – further obscures this troubling continuity.

“U.S. policy in many areas exhibits remarkable bipartisan consensus beneath the partisan theater,” says Aaron Maté, an independent journalist who covers U.S. foreign policy. “What changes most dramatically between administrations isn’t the substance of policies but how they’re framed by major media outlets.”

Gaza and Israel: Bipartisan Support for Military Operations

When examining U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza, the consistency across administrations becomes clear, despite different rhetoric.

During Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, Trump provided unwavering support despite the massive civilian casualties that critics called genocidal. He issued stark warnings to Hamas – “If the Israeli hostages in Gaza are not released, it will not be good for Hamas… All hell will break out” – and labeled Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas “legitimate” despite the humanitarian crisis.

But this stance wasn’t a significant departure from his Democratic predecessors.

Joe Biden likewise endorsed Israel’s military objectives amid international outcry. “Israel’s goal of attempting to eliminate Hamas is a legitimate objective,” Biden said, using almost identical language to Trump. The Biden administration was reportedly so committed to Israel’s campaign that it feared a pause in bombing would “illuminate the devastation” to the public.

U.S. support under Biden went beyond diplomatic cover. His administration provided more than $14 billion in weaponry and repeatedly vetoed U.N. ceasefire resolutions. According to reporting by Aaron Maté, U.S. officials even gave Israel precise GPS coordinates of hospitals and aid shelters – sites that were subsequently bombed.

Barack Obama’s record shows similar patterns. During the 2014 Gaza war, Obama approved emergency ammunition resupplies to Israel even as that offensive killed approximately 1,900 Palestinians. Like his successors, he defended Israel’s right to self-defense and ensured U.S. diplomatic protection.

The media reaction to these policies shifts dramatically depending on which party occupies the White House.

Under Trump, liberal outlets explicitly blamed his administration’s hawkish stance for worsening the humanitarian disaster. MSNBC and CNN hosts highlighted Palestinian civilian casualties and suggested Trump was complicit in potential war crimes.

When Biden took the same stance, legacy media were far more restrained. They focused blame on Netanyahu or Hamas rather than on Biden’s support. While activists dubbed Biden “Genocide Joe,” major news networks rarely used such harsh personal descriptions.

Fox News and other conservative outlets, meanwhile, criticized Biden not for being too supportive of Israel, but for being insufficiently hawkish – highlighting how each side’s media hesitates to fault “their” president for aligning with Israel.

First Amendment: A Bipartisan Assault on Free Speech

Trump’s hostility toward the press is well-documented. He famously labeled media the “enemy of the people,” revoked press credentials of critical reporters, and pressed social media companies to suppress posts he deemed harmful.

These actions rightly raised First Amendment concerns. But similar violations occurred under Democratic administrations, though with less bombastic rhetoric.

Barack Obama’s presidency saw an unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers, which press-freedom groups argued amounted to an assault on investigative journalism. Obama invoked the Espionage Act at least eight times to prosecute sources who revealed government wrongdoing – more cases than all previous presidents combined.

“President Obama has waged the most aggressive and vindictive assault on whistleblowers of any president in American history,” journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote in 2012. This “war on whistleblowers” included targeting Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, forcing the latter into exile, and secretly seizing Associated Press reporters’ phone records in a leak investigation.

The Biden administration similarly tested First Amendment boundaries, particularly regarding online speech. Internal emails and the “Twitter Files” showed that Biden officials frequently pressured social media platforms to remove or suppress content labeled “misinformation” on topics like COVID-19 and elections.

In 2023, a federal appeals court found that the Biden White House and FBI “likely coerced” social platforms into censoring Americans’ posts – “commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.” The court affirmed that the administration’s behind-the-scenes lobbying of tech companies, including “intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences,” crossed the line into unconstitutional censorship.

Media coverage of these free speech issues reveals striking hypocrisy. Under Trump, left-leaning outlets were zealous in defending First Amendment norms, running frequent editorials warning that Trump’s attacks on the press were “authoritarian” and set a “dangerous precedent.”

When Biden engaged in similar behavior – such as government pressure on tech companies to censor content – many of those same outlets were muted or defensive. The revelations from the Twitter Files and the circuit court’s ruling in 2023 barely penetrated primetime on liberal networks.

Conservative media performed the same flip-flop in reverse. Fox News downplayed Trump’s press attacks but became a vigorous First Amendment champion under Biden, giving platforms to journalists like Matt Taibbi to discuss government censorship.

Purging Government Officials: A Presidential Tradition

Trump’s aggressive purge of government officials deemed disloyal has generated significant concern, particularly his effort to gut the federal bureaucracy through reinstating “Schedule F,” which strips civil service protections from thousands of employees.

At the Department of Justice, Trump loyalists fired more than a dozen federal prosecutors who had worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s cases against Trump. An acting Attorney General justified this by saying those officials “could not be trusted to faithfully implement the President’s agenda because of their role in prosecuting the President.”

While no prior president attempted purges as sweeping as Schedule F, Democratic administrations have shown similar instincts to remove inconvenient officials.

Barack Obama faced controversy in 2009 for firing Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who was investigating a charity linked to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama ally. Obama’s sudden dismissal – without the full 30-day notice to Congress required by the IG Reform Act – prompted Senator Chuck Grassley to protest that it “could demonstrate a threat to the independence of federal IGs.”

Walpin himself alleged his firing was political retaliation for doing his job. The White House claimed Walpin was removed for cause, questioning his performance, and a court later found Walpin had no legal remedy.

Under Biden, a parallel emerged with the firing of Social Security Administration Commissioner Andrew Saul in 2021. Saul, a Trump appointee with a fixed term set to last until 2025, was terminated early after refusing to resign.

The White House and congressional Democrats argued Saul had “alienated” stakeholders with anti-beneficiary policies. Saul, however, blasted his ouster as a “Friday Night Massacre,” called it illegal, and refused to go quietly.

Media response to these firings varied dramatically based on the president’s party. When Trump fired officials, mainstream media typically framed it as a constitutional crisis or abuse of power. CNN and MSNBC analysts spoke of authoritarianism and drew parallels to Nixon.

When Obama or Biden fired officials, the mainstream press tended to either downplay the story or justify the president’s decision. The Walpin firing under Obama received minimal coverage outside conservative circles. Similarly, Biden’s removal of Commissioner Saul was reported with a factual, even positive tone, emphasizing Saul’s unpopularity and the legal basis for the move.

Conservative outlets, predictably, reversed this pattern – minimizing Trump’s firings while portraying Democratic personnel moves as power grabs.

Immigration Crackdowns: The “Deporter-in-Chief” Legacy

Perhaps no area better demonstrates bipartisan policy continuity than immigration enforcement, despite vastly different rhetoric.

Trump’s hardline approach to immigration – mass deportations, aggressive ICE raids, and expanded detention of asylum-seekers – generated intense criticism. His administration’s family separation policy became a defining scandal, with images of “kids in cages” dominating news cycles for months.

What received less attention was that many of these harsh policies had roots in previous administrations.

Barack Obama earned the unwelcome title of “Deporter-in-Chief” from immigration activists. Over his tenure from 2009 to 2016, Obama’s administration deported roughly 3 million people – the highest number under any president up to that point.

This included thousands of family separations (albeit not as a formal policy, but as a byproduct of deporting parents) and the detention of unaccompanied minors in Border Patrol facilities enclosed by chain-link fencing. In fact, the infamous “cages” that became a flashpoint under Trump were built during the Obama years for an earlier migrant surge.

Joe Biden, despite campaign promises of a more humane system, initially continued some of Trump’s toughest policies. Until 2022, the Biden administration kept using Title 42 (a pandemic-era order) to summarily expel hundreds of thousands of migrants without hearings – effectively bypassing asylum law much as Trump did.

Biden also defended in court the use of family detention and reopened large “overflow” migrant child facilities in Texas that had been shuttered. This led to accusations that he was simply renaming Trump’s cages. Biden officials insisted these were temporary shelters with better conditions, not “cages,” but the distinction often seemed semantic.

The media coverage of immigration policy shows some of the most glaring double standards. Under Trump, mainstream liberal media dedicated extensive coverage to the plight of migrants, often with visceral imagery and emotional appeals. The term “kids in cages” became ubiquitous in 2018 coverage.

When Biden took office, however, the tone shifted noticeably. In early 2021, when Biden reopened the holding center in Carrizo Springs, some media outlets conspicuously avoided the inflammatory language they’d used for Trump. The Associated Press noted conservatives’ charges of hypocrisy but defended Biden, arguing that the context was different.

Other outlets used sanitized phrases like “overflow facility for unaccompanied minors” instead of “cages.” Right-wing media highlighted this shift, pointing out that children were still in custody behind fencing with poor conditions, yet there was far less outrage on CNN or MSNBC.

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who has covered immigration for decades, reminds people that “racist immigration policy is bipartisan,” with Republicans more openly vicious but Democrats also culpable.

The Media’s Role in Obscuring Continuity

This examination of key policy areas reveals how presidential overreach has expanded gradually across administrations of both parties. Each president builds upon powers claimed by predecessors, creating an ever-more-powerful executive branch.

What differs most dramatically is not the actions themselves but how they’re portrayed in partisan media ecosystems.

When a Republican like Trump commits an abuse, liberal media amplify it as unprecedented authoritarianism, while conservative media minimize or justify it. When a Democrat like Obama or Biden does something similar, the roles reverse completely.

This selective outrage creates a distorted picture for Americans who primarily consume news from sources aligned with their political views.

“The most disturbing aspect of this pattern is how it undermines accountability,” says Glenn Greenwald, who has reported critically on administrations of both parties. “When wrongdoing becomes a partisan football rather than a matter of principle, it becomes impossible to build consensus for reform.”

Independent journalists like Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Maté, and Jeremy Scahill have been vital in documenting these uncomfortable truths. They point out that U.S. support for devastating wars spans presidencies; that crackdowns on speech and whistleblowers occurred under liberal icons as well as under Trump; and that inhumane treatment of immigrants has sadly been a bipartisan project for decades.

Moving Toward Principled Accountability

Americans seeking to understand presidential power must look beyond partisan narratives that frame every action as either unprecedented tyranny or reasonable governance based solely on which party holds office.

The evidence suggests a more complex reality: a decades-long expansion of executive authority that continues regardless of who occupies the White House, enabled by a media landscape that prioritizes partisan advantage over consistent principles.

Breaking this cycle requires citizens to seek out sources that apply the same standards regardless of party – typically found among independent journalists rather than major corporate media outlets.

It also demands recognition that opposing presidential overreach only when the other team holds power is a recipe for continued erosion of constitutional limits. The precedents set by each administration become tools for the next, regardless of party.

As Noam Chomsky and other critics have long argued, meaningful reform requires consistent application of principles rather than selective outrage. Only by holding all presidents to the same standard – regardless of party – can Americans hope to restore proper constitutional balance.

The uncomfortable truth revealed by this examination is that while Trump may have pushed presidential power to new extremes, he did so by walking through doors left open by his Democratic predecessors – a fact that partisan media on both sides work hard to obscure.