With Biden set to exit the White House next month, the topic of how people will look back on his leadership as the 46th president has been raised before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025. Rove, who argued Biden’s legacy would not be “pretty” in the short term, suggested the president’s decision to push the American Rescue Plan started “a gigantic burst of inflation” and would be the biggest domestic concern plaguing Biden’s presidency in retrospect.

“The second thing that they’re going to remember him for is weakness on the international front,” Rove said on Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy. “Almost from the beginning moment, most visibly seen in the withdrawal, the bloody, unnecessary withdrawal from Afghanistan that emboldened the dictators in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, and Beijing to see America’s weak, and led, in my opinion, directly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to the emboldening of our adversaries in the Middle East and the attack on October 7 on Israel.”

Another moment that occurred during Biden’s last year of presidency, which Rove suggested would be a key part in looking back on Biden, was his performance at the first 2024 presidential debate in June, during which the nation saw the president was “incapable of putting two sentences together.” Biden dropped his reelection bid a few weeks after the debate and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the 2024 election to Trump.

“He will be seen as a man who should not have been there in the first place and certainly should never have considered running for his second term cause he was not up to fulfilling and finishing his first term with strength and vigor, let alone trying to seek eight years of office in the White House,” said Rove.

Going forward, Rove contended the Democrats could still address the topics that hampered their presidential ticket in 2024, noting how Harris only lost the White House by 1.5% of the popular vote. He also noted that while the Republican Party has smaller problems than its opposing party, it still needs to “do a better job” at explaining its platform to voters if it wants to expand its lead in future elections.

The Democratic Party’s future going into 2025 was also addressed by the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York, who argued the party lacks anyone who can lead it and match Trump’s “stature.” One of the few bright spots for Democrats over the last weeks that York also noted could spill into the next year, is the disunity between House Republicans, which Democrats hope will “help them trip up” their opponents.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), who attempted to challenge Biden’s candidacy in the 2024 Democratic primary, recently said his party is “rudderless” following the 2024 election cycle, in which Democrats also lost control of the Senate and failed to retake the House. He then called for Democrats to engage with groups the party has “turned our back on” in its attempt to win back voters in the future.