Joe Biden Sends Republicans Into Outrage Mode By Telling The Truth About Their Drift from Democracy

If right-wing Republicans want Joe Biden to stop calling them a threat to democracy, perhaps they should stop threatening democracy. The GOP — which spent years in a state of rapture as Donald Trump tarred journalists and political opponents as “scumbags” and “savages” and dangerous “radicals" — was outraged by the president’s primetime address Thursday. Not only did they fail to receive the apology Kevin McCarthy demanded of Biden for labeling MAGA ideology as “semi-fascism" last week; they endured yet another round of criticism from the president, who warned that Trump and his followers “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

“For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it’s not. We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it — each and every one of us,” Biden said Thursday outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy.”

It was a powerful speech, harkening back to the pro-democracy themes of Biden’s 2020 campaign while also expanding upon them in light of more recent events. “I believe in the give-and-take of politics, in disagreement and debate and dissent,” Biden said. “We’re a big, complicated country. But democracy endures only if we, the people, respect the guardrails of the republic.” There was a dash of politics in Biden's address, of course, as he rattled off a few items on his administration’s impressive list of achievements. But all of that was secondary, he said, to the danger Trump’s movement poses to “our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.”

“I believe America is at an inflection point — one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after,” Biden said. “And now, America must choose: To move forward or to move backwards? To build the future or obsess about the past? To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism, or a nation of fear, division, and of darkness?”

The right, obviously, went into outrage mode. Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany, former White House Press Secretary under Trump, claimed that Biden had given the “most divisive presidential speech” she’d ever seen. And not only that: He’d also given it in front of a “hellish red background.”

https://twitter.com/kayleighmcenany/status/1565496848160366592

The event's choice of lighting featured in a number of conservative complaints; evidently, viewers were “shocked” by the color red, according to Fox. But those on the right who managed to get past the odd mise en scène found other aspects of the speech to complain about. They griped, for example, that Biden didn’t call for “unity” with Republicans, even though a large swath of the party still doesn't accept him as a legitimate president. They also called him “cynical” for speaking out against a group of people who have spent the last six years cozying up to someone who appears to be flagrantly corrupt demagogue. Even before Biden had finished, McCarthy — the House minority leader who voted against certifying the 2020 election results before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6 — had already accused the president of launching “an assault on democracy.”

“When the president speaks tonight at Independence Hall,” McCarthy said, “the first lines out of his mouth should be to apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as ‘fascists.’”

It’s only slander, though, if it’s untrue. And despite McCarthy’s insistence that the “electric cord of liberty still sparks in our hearts” — whatever that means — Biden’s assessment of the GOP’s MAGA wing and those who have enabled it is accurate. Hell, one need only look to Pennsylvania, where Biden spoke, to see the right’s hostility to democracy; Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor there, is essentially running on a platform that regards the will of the voters irrelevant to his own political desires. Truth be told, Biden's speech wasn't about bashing people who disagree with his policies, despite what Louisiana Senator John Kennedy claimed on Fox News. It was about a powerful force within the GOP that, as the president himself warned, is ready to “embrace anger” and “thrive on chaos" to achieve undemocratic ends. The president has long cautioned about that threat. Now, he’s finally doing so with the kind of urgency it deserves. “Equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden said in his speech. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”