The divisive president: Joe Biden's unleashed a wave of wokery that'll enrage millions as his supporters in Silicon Valley shut down dissent, writes David Cameron's former policy adviser STEVE HILTON

British Conservatives have long railed against ‘BBC bias’ and the ‘Left-wing media’, but honestly…

The non-stop, undiluted, self-abasing fawning over Biden and his new administration on display over the past week or so from America’s smug, self-righteous, sanctimonious press corps makes North Korea’s mad ‘Dear Leader’ broadcasts sound like Radio Four’s Today programme. So what, you might say?

There is certainly some truth to that. But healthy democracy needs a sceptical, probing media to hold the powerful to account, and right now the American media is about as sceptical as a four-year-old sitting on Santa’s lap and as probing as a feather duster.

Take the most immediate crisis facing America, just as in the UK: the vaccine rollout. The media have breathlessly regurgitated Biden’s claims and commitments without actually checking the facts.

Biden’s team said they inherited a complete disaster and would have to build a vaccine distribution system from scratch. But if it was such a disaster, how come the vaccines are available at all?

It was Trump’s Operation Warp Speed that got them produced in record time. Before Biden was inaugurated, more than 16 million Americans had received their first shot – the highest in the world and the second highest per head of any major country, only slightly behind Britain.

We all know politicians use spin for political advantage but Biden promised to be straight with people about the virus. So it was cruelly deceptive for him to grandly promise 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days when, in fact, that would mean slowing down the pace set by Trump. America was heading for more than a million vaccinations a day the week before Biden was sworn in as President.

JUST last week, Biden announced the purchase of an extra 200 million vaccinations. But those were already on the way as part of the contracts negotiated by Trump.

Similarly, the new administration let it be known that the President was planning to invoke a wartime measure – the Defense Production Act – to force companies to increase vaccine supply.

But again, Trump had already done that and industry sources told the New York Times that there was no scope to go any further.

There is a clear pattern that’s already emerging: a massive gulf between President Biden’s words and his actions.

Before the election, he pledged he would work within the constraints of America’s constitutional ‘checks and balances’, respecting the fact that Congress, not the President, is supposed to make laws.

In October, he told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos that ‘I have this strange notion we are a democracy… there are things you can’t do by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We need consensus’.

Whatever happened to that? In his first two days in office, Biden issued 17 executive orders, compared to Trump’s one and Obama’s two in the same timeframe.

Biden’s tally is now higher than any President in history at this point in their tenure. Moreover, his orders represent dramatic moves to the Left in major and controversial policy areas such as immigration, the environment and crime.

The whole point of America’s checks and balances is to prevent the government from getting too big, too powerful and too centralised. Yet Biden and his Democrat allies in Congress are acting as if they’ve won a landslide majority in a parliamentary system where they have unchecked power.

That’s not only a hypocritical reversal of a central campaign pledge – to restore the ‘democratic norms’ that they endlessly accused Trump of undermining. It risks further inflaming tensions in a nation that is already dangerously divided. For the truth is that Biden did not win a landslide majority – not even close. Trump actually got more votes than any President running for re-election in American history