Even for me, this piece will be a tad odd.
Teammates here at PJ Media, such as Tim O’Brien, have highlighted President Donald Trump’s second-first 365 days in office.
Related: After Trump’s First Year, The Left Is Starting to Realize That It’s Losing
Warning: this piece ended up being quite egg-headed, so your mileage may vary if you tried this out.
Now that several AI platforms have evolved to where they are, many on the interwebs have highlighted how left-leaning ChatGPT has fallen.
I wanted to see for myself just how pronounced the tilt was, so I decided to use ChatGPT to share a comparison of the first years of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump 2.0.
- Unless otherwise indicated, my prompts are in bold, while all GPT’s answers are in italics.
- Full Disclosure: I use ChatGPT for researching my columns. In a previous lifetime, I wrote very technical articles that required literally hours of online research. Now? It takes minutes! That’s as much AI as I currently use.
First Prompt
Obviously, I wanted to compare two people during a specific time interval, so I needed to start somewhere. Rather than bore you immediately—I’ll bore you later—I’ll share the complete answers to my prompts.
- List all the accomplishments Joe Biden accomplished during his first 365 days as U.S. president.
- Same task, but this time with President Trump.
- Do a side-by-side comparison and separate legislative action from EOs.
Follow-Up
After following the path I was being led on, I asked what I thought was the $25,000 question, er, prompt: In your opinion, who had the better first year and why?
The initial reply seemed like a cop-out:
In the current exchange, the system requires neutral political analysis, meaning I can’t state a personal preference or verdict.
What I can do is run the exact same evaluative framework, step by step, and show which presidency scores higher on each criterion and why, then let the conclusion emerge from the evidence rather than from a declared opinion.
In a way, the reply was coolly logical and reassuring, yet I wanted meat. I don’t know if muscle grew, but here are the ways GPT reviewed and scored the two men’s first years:
First 365-Day Audit
Overall Best Analytic Guess: Donald Trump over Joe Biden
(Assessment based on system resilience, durability, and performance under inflation and energy stress rather than intent or messaging.)
Composite Scores
- Trump: ~8.5 / 10—Higher durability, more precise incentive alignment, stronger shock absorption.
- Biden: ~6.0–6.5 / 10—Greater speed and scale, but higher fragility and lower resilience.
Policy Durability
- Trump: 8.5—Expectation-setting and regulatory restraint required less continuous enforcement and survived institutional friction.
- Biden: 6.0—Heavy executive reliance increased exposure to court challenges, reversals, and expirations.
Economic Signal Coherence
- Trump: 9.0—Taxes, regulation, energy, and enforcement pointed in a single, production-oriented direction.)
- Biden: 6.0—Demand stimulus coincided with regulatory drag and energy transition signals that were out of sync.
Inflation Resilience
- Trump: 8.5—Supply-side elasticity and energy production signals increased shock absorption.
- Biden: 5.5—Demand surged faster than supply normalization, accelerating price pressure.
Energy Shock Readiness
- Trump: 9.0—Policy clarity encouraged investment, permitting, and surge capacity.
- Biden: 5.0—Regulatory uncertainty delayed response when global prices moved.
Structural Economic Impact
- Trump: 8.5— The framework emphasized production capacity and adaptability beyond federal spending.
- Biden: 6.0—Relief stabilized the moment but did not compound structurally.
Executive Versus Legislative Balance
- Trump: 8.0—Governance relied more on institutional behavior and less on brittle executive scaffolding.
- Biden: 6.0—Major initiatives depended on sustained executive authority and legal insulation.)
Speed of Action
- Trump: 7.5—Deliberate pacing prioritized durability over immediacy.)
- Biden: 8.0—Rapid deployment of relief prevented short-term collapse.)
Margin of Safety (Slack*)
- Trump: 8.5—Built buffer capacity before shocks intensified.
- Biden: 5.5—Consumed slack early to stabilize conditions.
*Slack is the unused capacity that allows a system to absorb shocks without breaking.
Final Judgment: Trump’s first 365 days had a higher overall.
ChatGPT Writes a Column
My final prompt was simple: using all the information you’ve compiled, compose a column that explains your results.
And here’s what it kicked out.
I don’t weigh presidencies by speeches, crothatsize, or legislative page counts. I audit systems. I look for incentives, slack, durability, and failure points. Every presidency builds a framework in year one, whether leaders plan it or not. That framework determines how the system behaves once pressure arrives.
Calm hides flaws. Stress exposes them.
Inflation and energy shocks act like diagnostics. They don’t respond to good intentions. They apply force and reveal structure.
I begin with alignment. Tax policy, regulation, energy production, and labor signals must point in the same direction. When they do, systems stabilize. When they don’t, volatility grows.
Next comes durability. Laws passed through Congress outlast executive directives. Incentives that work without enforcement survive longer than rules that require constant supervision.
Finally, I look for slack. Systems without slack fail suddenly.
Donald Trump’s first year moved the system toward flexibility and expansion. Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, increasing after-tax capital and lowering friction. Regulatory rollback reduced cost stacking. Energy policy expanded leasing, permitting, and infrastructure approvals.
Those choices mattered because they increased supply capacity before demand surged. Inflation remained low because production could respond to it. Energy markets stayed stable because producers expected continuity.
From a systems perspective, Trump’s first year built buffer capacity.
Joe Biden entered office during a crisis. That context matters, but structure still matters more.
His first year emphasized relief spending and regulatory expansion. The American Rescue Plan surged demand into an economy with constrained supply. Climate-driven regulatory signals reduced certainty in energy investment. Executive action replaced legislation in key areas, increasing legal fragility.
When inflationary pressures emerged, options narrowed. Demand outpaced supply. Energy response lagged confidence. Courts paused or reversed several initiatives, compounding uncertainty.
From an analytic standpoint, the framework consumed slack rather than building it.
The gap doesn’t come from ideology. It comes from structure.
Frameworks built for adaptation bend under stress. Frameworks built for control resist until they crack. Inflation and energy markets reward slack and punish rigidity every time.
Relief spending stabilizes moments. Structural reform stabilizes systems.
I don’t ask whether leaders meant well. I ask whether systems could survive pressure. Inflation and energy shocks delivered the exam. One first-year absorbed force. The other amplified it.
Manney’s Turn
I admit I was surprised by how this turned out. Given all the evidence that GPT is a left-leaning machine, I thought it presented a reasoned explanation of its “thinking.”
But what do I know? Do these results change your opinion of AI, or do you think it’s a one-off?
As the kids say, tell me what you think in the comments.
Pressure always audits leadership eventually. PJ Media VIP is built for readers who want analysis that holds up under pressure.
