Biden comparing Trump to Herbert Hoover a ‘cheap shot’, descendant says

Joe Biden is taking a “cheap shot” whenever he gleefully compares Donald Trump to Herbert Hoover, a prominent political commentator said, defending the 31st president whose single term in office coincided with the Great Depression.

“It’s such a cheap shot,” Margaret Hoover, the president’s great granddaughter and a commentator for CNN and PBS, told Politico. “If a person spent a minute studying Herbert Hoover’s contributions, one would come to see that these political jabs have obscured a shining example of an uncommon public servant.”

Hoover was a mining engineer before entering government and earning the nickname “the Great Humanitarian”, for his work to keep allied nations fed during the first world war. A Republican, he decisively defeated the New York governor Al Smith to win the White House in 1928.

According to the White House website, Hoover’s “opponents in Congress … unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel president” as he sought to cope with the global economic catastrophe that struck less than a year after the start of his term.

Margaret Hoover was also accusing Trump of using her ancestor’s name in vain.

Last month, Trump said hoped the US economy would crash “during this next 12 months” – before his seemingly inevitable election rematch with Biden – “because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”

Biden, who had already compared Trump to Hoover, seized on Trump’s remark, saying in social media video: “He doesn’t want to be Herbert Hoover. He has to understand, he’s already Herbert Hoover. He’s the only other president who lost jobs during his term.”

Trump’s time in office, between 2017 and 2021, ended in the chaos of Covid, a pandemic that battered the