President-elect Joe Biden won the presidency in large part because he promised to be the anti-Trump on policy, temperament, tone and just about everything else. But two men who helped run the Obama White House are urging him to follow President Trump’s example in a specific way: by unapologetically leaning on executive actions to implement key policies.
The advice from former Obama chiefs of staff Rahm Emanuel and Denis McDonough comes as Biden prepares to enter office with an agenda potentially stalled by a closely divided Congress: a much smaller House majority than expected and a 50-50 Senate, at best.
“There is — as President Trump himself has demonstrated with the consent, quite obvious consent of Republicans in Congress – an enormous amount of leeway for the president to institute executive action on things like immigration and energy and climate policy,” said McDonough, who served as chief of staff for much of Obama’s second term.
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