Claude dropped the caveat from the Biden list; on the Trump list it adds a caveat.

Assessing "failures" involves value judgments, but there are a number of areas where criticism has been broad — often including from Democrats and from analysts sympathetic to the administration's goals. Here are the most frequently cited, roughly in order of consequence:

1. The decision to seek reelection
Widely viewed, in hindsight, as the administration's most consequential political failure. Biden was elected at 78 after hinting he might be a transitional figure, then ran again at 81. His staff and allies limited his exposure to unscripted settings and dismissed concerns about his decline as partisan attacks; the June 2024 debate made the issue undeniable. His withdrawal in July left Kamala Harris roughly 100 days and no primary contest. The result — Trump's return to power — directly negated what Biden framed as his presidency's central purpose.

2. Inflation and the response to it
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, the highest in four decades, and cumulative price increases of roughly 20% over the term did lasting political damage. Critics, including Democratic economists Larry Summers and Jason Furman, argued the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan was excessive for an economy already recovering. Global supply shocks and energy prices were major drivers too, but the administration compounded the problem by initially calling inflation "transitory" and later appearing to argue with voters about their own economic experience ("Bidenomics").

3. The Afghanistan withdrawal
The August 2021 exit was chaotic: the Afghan government collapsed far faster than predicted, the Kabul airport bombing killed 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghans, and American citizens and Afghan allies were left behind. Even supporters of withdrawal criticized the planning and intelligence failures. Biden's approval rating fell below 50% and never recovered.

4. The southern border
Rollback of Trump-era restrictions without a workable alternative contributed to record encounters — over 10 million across the term, peaking near 300,000 in December 2023. The administration was slow to treat it as a crisis and only imposed significant executive restrictions in June 2024, after the collapse of a bipartisan bill. Criticized from the right as a loss of control and from the left for ultimately adopting restrictive measures.

5. Gaza policy
After October 7, 2023, the administration paired near-unconditional military support for Israel with public appeals for restraint it rarely enforced — repeatedly setting "red lines" (notably on Rafah) that were crossed without consequence. The result satisfied few: it failed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, failed to secure a ceasefire during Biden's term, and fractured his own coalition. The $230 million Gaza aid pier was a costly failure. Pre-war, national security adviser Jake Sullivan's assessment that the region was "quieter than it has been in decades" aged badly.

6. Failure to deliver the core legislative agenda
Build Back Better collapsed under Manchin and Sinema, and the salvaged Inflation Reduction Act was a fraction of it. Voting rights legislation, police reform, and immigration reform all failed. The expanded child tax credit lapsed at the end of 2021, and child poverty more than doubled. The administration arguably overpromised on what a 50-50 Senate could produce.

7. Weak implementation of signature laws
The infrastructure law, CHIPS Act, and IRA were slow to produce visible results. The $7.5 billion EV charger program had built only a handful of stations by 2024; the $42 billion broadband program had connected essentially no households. Failure to achieve permitting reform hampered the clean-energy buildout the IRA was meant to unleash. The theory that "deliverism" would generate political credit didn't survive contact with reality.

8. Ukraine incrementalism
Contested, but the common critique is twofold: deterrence failed before February 2022 (including the Nord Stream 2 sanctions waiver), and the drip-feed approach to weapons — long delays on HIMARS, ATACMS, tanks, F-16s, and on permission to strike inside Russia — gave Russia time to adapt and left the war without a plausible theory of victory or a clear stated end-state.

9. Student loan forgiveness
The initial plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska as exceeding executive authority; successor plans were also partly blocked. The sequence raised expectations, delivered less than promised, and angered both borrowers and critics of the policy.

10. Pandemic endgame and public health credibility
Test shortages during the Omicron wave, confusing CDC guidance, the OSHA vaccine mandate struck down by the Supreme Court, unresolved school-closure and learning-loss debates, and massive fraud in pandemic relief programs all eroded trust in public health institutions.

11. Rule-of-law messaging and the pardons
After repeatedly saying he would not, Biden pardoned his son Hunter, then issued unusual preemptive pardons to family members and officials on his way out. Whatever the justification, it undercut a presidency built on contrast with Trump's treatment of the justice system.

12. Political communication generally
Biden held historically few press conferences and interviews. The administration struggled to explain its own accomplishments, lost significant ground with young, Black, Hispanic, and non-college voters, and left office with approval in the high 30s.

Two caveats worth noting: some of these (Ukraine, the ARP's role in inflation) remain genuinely disputed among specialists, and several — inflation, migration surges, post-pandemic disorder — hit incumbent governments worldwide, which complicates attributing them purely to policy choices.

Happy to do the same exercise for the administration's significant achievements, or to go deeper on any one of these.

Below are criticisms and setbacks most commonly cited by analysts, journalists, and political opponents. "Failure" involves value judgments, so I've tried to focus on cases where there's either broad agreement that something went badly or a measurable gap between a stated goal and the outcome. I'm happy to give the parallel list of claimed successes, or the counterarguments to any of these, if that's useful.

First term (2017–2021)

COVID-19 response. The most frequently cited failure. Early public downplaying of the threat, a badly delayed and botched testing rollout, inconsistent messaging on masks, public friction with his own health officials, and per-capita death rates worse than most peer democracies. (Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine development effort, is widely regarded as a genuine success of the same period.)

The 2020 election aftermath and January 6. Refusing to concede, promoting unsubstantiated fraud claims, pressuring state officials and the vice president, and the Capitol attack. This led to a second impeachment and, later, criminal indictments. Even many Republicans who supported his policies regard this as a serious failure of conduct.

Failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The central domestic promise of the 2016 campaign. Despite unified Republican control, the effort collapsed in the Senate in July 2017, and no replacement plan was ever produced.

Deficits and debt. The national debt grew by roughly $7.8 trillion. The 2017 tax cuts did not generate the growth needed to offset revenue losses, and spending rose even before pandemic relief.

Family separation at the border. The 2018 "zero tolerance" policy separated thousands of children from parents. Government watchdogs found inadequate planning and recordkeeping so poor that some families took years to reunite — or never did. It was reversed under political and legal pressure.

The border wall. Roughly 450 miles of barrier were built, mostly replacing existing fencing; Mexico never paid for it, and funding required a national emergency declaration after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The China trade war. Tariffs were largely borne by U.S. importers and consumers; farmers required tens of billions in bailouts; China fell well short of its Phase One purchase commitments; and the overall U.S. trade deficit grew rather than shrank.

North Korea diplomacy. Three unprecedented meetings with Kim Jong Un produced no denuclearization agreement, and North Korea's nuclear and missile programs expanded.

Personnel chaos. Record turnover in senior White House staff and Cabinet positions, a large number of "acting" officials, and repeated public feuds with his own appointees — which many former officials describe as having impaired policy execution.

Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico. Slow federal response, an estimated death toll in the thousands, and withheld or delayed recovery funds.

Infrastructure. Repeatedly promised, never delivered; "Infrastructure Week" became a running joke.

Opioid crisis. A public health emergency was declared, but overdose deaths rose substantially over the term.

Contested items — where the "failure" label depends heavily on your priors: withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, the Doha agreement with the Taliban, pardons and clemency decisions, conflicts of interest around family business holdings, the firing of multiple inspectors general, and pressure on the Justice Department.

Second term (2025– )

I'd treat this section as provisional — it's ongoing, and my information may be incomplete or out of date. Criticisms drawing the most attention have included: the scale and legal basis of the April 2025 "Liberation Day" tariffs and the resulting market volatility and policy reversals; the DOGE-driven federal workforce and foreign-aid cuts, including the dismantling of USAID and disputes over whether claimed savings were real; aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and deportations that courts have found to violate due process; the "Signalgate" disclosure of military planning on a commercial messaging app; the handling of the Epstein files after explicit campaign promises of full disclosure; and continued inflation and affordability pressures despite that being a central campaign theme.

If you want, I can go deeper on any single item, or lay out the strongest case for the administration's record for balance.