Joe Biden's dangerous rhetoric is something even Donald Trump didn't engage in
In November 2020, fresh off his victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, Joe Biden called on Americans to set aside their political differences and come together as one people.
“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, and listen to each other again,” the president-elect said on Twitter. “To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.”
Fast-forward 22 months, and Biden — midway through his first term in office and continuing to struggle in the polls despite what the press is hailing as a string of political victories — has changed his tune dramatically.
“It’s not just Trump,” Biden said at a campaign event in Maryland last week. “It’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”
The president doubled down during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, lambasting Republicans for — in his words — encouraging political violence. It was a theme he repeated during his primetime address on Thursday, saying that Republicans “fan the flames of political violence.”
Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, had a chance to walk back the president’s original “semi-fascism” comment, but chose instead to fan flames in her own right.
“The MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party,” she said Wednesday. “That is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.”
So much for putting away the harsh rhetoric. So much for lowering the temperature. So much for treating one another as Americans instead of enemies.
As many observers have correctly pointed out, Biden wasn’t calling Trump or other elected politicos “semi-fascists” last week. He was calling anyone who voted for Trump “semi-fascists.” This is the exact dangerous rhetoric that has led us to our current state of affairs, where friendships are ending over red-vs.-blue political differences, where college students who vote Democrat refuse to room with students who vote Republican.
Our nation’s differences are increasingly looking irreconcilable. More than 4 in 10 Americans now believe we’re headed for civil war, and with rhetoric like we’re seeing from Biden and his cohorts, who can blame them for feeling that way?
Speaking of which, Biden has had something to say about civil war the last few days, too. While speaking in Pennsylvania, he lashed out at Republicans who — quite correctly, by the way — point out that the 2nd Amendment is about defense against tyrannical government.
“For those brave right-wing Americans who say it’s all about keeping America independent and safe,” Biden said of the 2nd Amendment, “if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something more than a gun.”
You’ll never hear it from the mainstream media, but not even Trump — vile and insulting though he may be — has ever gone after common Americans the way Biden has in the past week.
I used to say that Barack Obama governed as the most divisive president of my lifetime, then along came Trump — who was Obama on steroids when it comes to divisiveness. Now we have Biden, who is proving that he can out-divide even Trump when it comes to driving the wedge between the American people.
But what sets Biden apart from Trump is that Trump never campaigned as a unifier. He never called on Americans to set aside their differences. He never attempted to veil his divisiveness. Biden literally calls on Americans to set aside their differences in one breath, then assails them in another. And then he has the nerve to say it is the millions of Republicans who voted for Trump who are “semi-fascists.” His press secretary has the audacity to claim that millions of ordinary Americans who identify as conservative Republicans are an “extreme threat to democracy.”
The fact that the same legacy media that howled and screeched for four years of Trump’s dumb Twitter statements can’t bring itself to begin to criticize or condemn the ridiculous rhetoric coming from the Biden White House just goes to show how hopelessly complicit it is in this scheme to divide Americans for the dumb sake of political gain.
For more than 200 years, political norms in America — political etiquette, if you will — has been to go after the elected with zeal and purpose, but leave those doing the electing alone. Biden and his team, though, are throwing generations of political etiquette and normalcy out the window. We now have American leaders who are proudly using terminology to refer to millions of Americans — nearly half the country — in the same vein as we once spoke of Nazis and Cold War Russians.
It’s not clear exactly who Biden believes he’s fooling with this drivel, but obviously he thinks he’s pulling the wool over someone’s eyes, given the new attempt to paint Republicans as being responsible for political violence. Perhaps he’s missed the headlines about the violent attacks and firebombings that have occurred at planned pregnancy centers since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. Perhaps he’s forgotten that it was one of his colleagues — California congresswoman Maxine Waters — who encouraged her followers to confront members of Trump’s team wherever they find them in public … or that Waters’ followers were more than happy to oblige on a number of occasions. Perhaps he’s forgotten that it was Republican lawmakers — not Democrats — who were targeted by a mass shooter at a charity baseball game just five years ago.
That’s not to say that Republican-inspired political violence is non-existent in this divided America that is our reality. Because the truth is that both sides are guilty of fanning flames of hatred and division. But to try to pin the political violence we’re seeing on Republicans is completely asinine … though perhaps unsurprising for a divisive president who is more than happy to paint tens of millions of his fellow Americans as fascists intent on destroying democracy.