Biden awards 18 Medals of Freedom and delivers unmistakable message

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

87% : After Trump won in 2016, President Barack Obama gave the medal to NBA star Michael Jordan, actors Tom Hanks and Robert De Niro and others.
74% : Four years later, as Trump was leaving office, he gave the medal to two professional golfers, an Olympic athlete, and Reps. Devin Nunes of California and Jim Jordan of Ohio, two of his fiercest Republican loyalists in Congress.
61% : The award for the elder Romney echoes Biden's decision this week to award the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the nation's highest civilian honors, to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who led the effort to hold Trump accountable for his actions during the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
60% : With 16 days left in a political career that spanned a half-century, President Joe Biden on Saturday conferred one of the nation's highest honors on core members of the political, financial and celebrity establishment of which he has long been a part.
56% : After weeks in which Trump has showcased Elon Musk, the world's richest man, as a member of his inner circle, Biden appeared to want to say: We have our billionaires, too.
52% : They also included the media executive and cultural figure Anna Wintour, who put the first lady, Jill Biden, on the cover of Vogue twice in the past four years while spurning Melania Trump during her husband's presidency.
52% : Both awards from a Democratic president to prominent Republicans offered to give Biden the kind of public relations jolt that has mostly been reserved for Trump since the election.
48% : " But on Saturday, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 18 people, including some of the brightest lights of the old guard that Trump wants to tear down.
46% : The decision by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to endorse Trump during the campaign - despite denunciations from most of his relatives - helped lead to Trump's choice of him to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
38% : In 2016, Trump vowed to wage war against establishment members in both parties who he said had "reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
25% : That is something that many members of Biden's party have been wary of doing, fearing that Trump and other Republicans would seize on it as evidence of the conspiratorial control they say he has.
21% : The younger Romney is the only Republican to vote twice to convict Trump after his two impeachments.
5% : Among those receiving the award were Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state whom Trump threatened to jail and who received a standing ovation Saturday; Robert F. Kennedy, the assassinated senator whose son has embraced Trump; and George Romney, the late father of former Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who repeatedly rejected Trump's actions and philosophy.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.