Comment When American presidents reserve prime time to address the nation about serious threats facing the country, they almost always focus on outside forces — the Soviet Union, foreign terrorism or even the coronavirus. But when President Biden stood before Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday night, he warned that American democracy is on the precipice because of a decidedly different threat — one he said comes from within the country’s borders. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our democracy,” Biden said. In a remarkable turn, the president of the United States identified his predecessor and his followers – a group that arguably includes millions of US citizens – as the most serious threat to the stability of the 246-year-old American experiment. Not since the Civil War has an American president issued such a stern warning about the behavior and threat posed by their countrymen. The claim cemented Biden’s stunning shift from his vision of unifying the country. Biden has long singled out Trump as uniquely ungovernable, but his heated rhetoric on Thursday broadened the scope of the perceived threat to include the legions of “MAGA Republicans” standing by Trump, his lies and his attack on American standards. In making his fiery denunciation, the president sought to distinguish between Trump and his supporters and “mainstream” Republicans, including those who have worked on bipartisan legislation with Democrats. “Not all Republicans — not even the majority of Republicans — are MAGA Republicans,” Biden said. “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.” The question for Biden, however, is whether he can successfully isolate “MAGA Republicans” as a bloc against which the rest of the country will rally, or whether so many conservatives and Republicans will feel targeted by the rhetoric that it backfires. After all, more than 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Beyond that, it’s unclear exactly who qualifies as a “MAGA Republican,” though Biden appeared to zero in on those who recklessly question election results and support political violence. On Friday, Biden tried to continue to draw a distinction, telling reporters, “I don’t see any Trump supporter as a threat to the country.” He added, “I think anyone who calls for the use of force, fails to condemn violence when it is used, refuses to recognize that the election has been won, insists on changing the way you count votes — that’s a threat to democracy.” But Trump’s supporters are generally doing all that, supporting the former president’s calls to overturn the 2020 election and electing candidates who vow to rewrite the election rules, and supporting his promise to pardon those who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a longtime friend of Biden, said Thursday’s speech did not come naturally to the president. Coons noted that Biden was often criticized during his presidential campaign for being too optimistic about the prospect of uniting the country, mocked by fellow Democrats for predicting an outbreak of bipartisanship in Washington. “I think it was very difficult for him to decide to give that speech and to give that speech,” Coons said. “He was full neck. It was passionate. It was from his heart. But he’s spent most of his first two years barely mentioned in the [former] President, trying to focus on progress, hoping the country would come closer instead of seeming closer to falling apart.” He added: “I think it was only reluctantly that he chose to give such a clear and forceful warning of what lies ahead.” Those who identify with Trump and the MAGA movement, for their part, immediately saw Biden’s comments as a declaration of war. “Did Joe Biden Just Declare War on Red State America?” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) tweeted. “I sure hope not!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) added: “Joe Biden just declared all of us enemies of the state.” And while Biden has tried to argue that he is only targeting a narrow group of pro-Trump activists, GOP leaders have sought to frame Biden’s rhetoric as targeting a vast group of Americans. “President Biden has chosen to divide, belittle and belittle his fellow Americans,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said Thursday. “Why? Simply because they disagree with his policies. That’s not leadership.” McCarthy also asked Biden to apologize “for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists,” after Biden told a Democratic fundraiser last month that many in the Democratic Party were moving toward “semi-fascism.” But few Republicans were quick to dispute the key points of Biden’s speech — that many under Trump are working to undermine fundamentals of American democracy, such as the notion that people who lose elections should respect the results. Instead, many tried to shift the debate to Biden’s policies, attacking his record on inflation, crime and immigration. “What would help the ‘soul of the nation’ far more than a condescending lecture from President Biden is to get inflation under control instead of actively spending more money to make it worse,” wrote Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn. .) on Twitter. . “Or to enforce our immigration laws to prevent hundreds of thousands of American drug overdose deaths and the profound human suffering caused by runaway illegal immigration.” Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian who was among a small group of academics who met with Biden last month to warn that American democracy is faltering, said it was not surprising that those targeted by Biden’s rhetoric would respond by rejecting her. “They should say the same thing about what Lincoln said in 1861 and what FDR warned about in 1938,” Beslos said. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln was desperately trying to hold the country together as slave states threatened to secede, and in 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned against rising fascism. “For God’s sake, you can’t be afraid to criticize your fellow man if they do something that is a threat to this country,” said former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.). Biden is not the only president or presidential candidate to criticize a broad segment of the American public in recent years and face potential political danger in doing so. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama referred to some working-class voters by saying, “They get bitter, they get attached to guns or religion or dislike of people who don’t look like them, anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment. , as a way of explaining their frustrations.” Obama’s opponent in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, quickly seized on the comments to paint Obama as insensitive to ordinary Americans. In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested that 47 percent of Americans are government freeloaders. “It’s not my job to worry about these people — I’m never going to convince them that they should take personal responsibility and take care of their own lives,” Romney said. And in 2016, Clinton ran into her own problems when she estimated that half of Trump’s supporters could fit into what she called the “basket of deplorables” — meaning, she said, that they were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic. .” The phrase became a rallying cry for Trump supporters, and after his election, some threw a “DeploraBall” to celebrate. But each of these remarks was made offhand at a party fundraiser and was not intended for a wider audience. Obama, Romney and Clinton apologized. By contrast, Biden’s accusation that Trump and his followers represent “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic” was a carefully thought-out claim made in a televised address. A Biden adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions, dismissed comparisons to Romney’s and Clinton’s comments, citing ways Trump and his allies have sought to undermine democracy, from spreading lies about the 2020 election to supporting those who attacked Capitol Hill. on January 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Biden’s victory from being made official. The adviser said Biden had no choice but to call out forces he sees as a threat to American democracy, describing Republicans’ outraged responses as “performative.” Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who served in the Senate with Biden in the 1990s, said the president could have “stepped up” his criticism of how supporters behaved of Trump. “That was a mild review,” Kerrey said. “It’s a form of fascism to say we’re not going to have a peaceful transition of power.” He added: “If he hadn’t called it out, he would have regretted it.”
