In early September, Joe Biden delivered what has now been dubbed his “red speech.” Somehow, the content managed to be worse than the presentation. The president railed against “MAGA Republicans,” declaring them enemies of the state and a threat to the republic.
Truly, it was the most obscene speech a president has given since the popularization of modern national addresses. Far from being a unifying figure, Biden chose to drive a knife through the heart of the country, and it didn’t take long for the walk-backs to begin. Pretty soon, the president began insisting that he wasn’t talking about “mainstream Republicans” and that the “ultra MAGA” represented a smaller proportion of the public.
But if you expected the White House’s message to be coherent, you probably also expected the sun to not rise this morning. Now, Biden is contradicting himself again, asserting that “ultra MAGA” now includes those who disagree with him on…tax policy and social security?
This is as stupid as it is obviously calculated. Biden and his handlers want to have it both ways. In some situations, they want to insist they are uniters just calling out a small segment of Trump supporters. In other situations, they want to literally paint anyone to the right of Larry Hogan as an “extremist.”
But what’s been clear from the beginning is that the latter is what the White House truly believes. “Ultra MAGA” and “MAGA Republicans” are defined as anyone who dares to question the regime. The authoritarianism is the point, and if Biden could get away with it, he’d be targeting his opponents in much more direct ways.
Heck, by the president’s new definition, Liz Cheney is now “ultra MAGA,” which would probably come as a surprise to everyone. After all, she favors tax cuts and supported Social Security reform. Yet, what makes Biden’s attack especially dumb is that it’s not even true. What Republicans are trying to touch Social Security and Medicare? Rick Scott? His plan went nowhere and gained no support. And last I checked, Biden is the president. He can simply veto anything that might get passed.
In short, everything about the president’s post, from his absurd broadening out of “MAGA Republicans” to his descriptions of what “ultra-MAGA” policies are, is baseless fearmongering by a desperate man who knows he’s going to lose the mid-terms.
Let me end with this. Does Biden sound like a man who actually believes Democrats are up in the generic ballot and are going to hold off the red wave? He sure seems panicked despite all the “comeback” narratives being pushed by the media, and he should be.