Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell torched President Biden over his recent speech imploring Democrats to ditch the filibuster to pass voting reform legislation, calling it “profoundly unpresidential” and “deliberately divisive.”
Biden delivered a speech on Tuesday calling on the Senate to change the filibuster in an effort to get Democrat voting laws rammed through Congress with a simple majority.
The tone of the speech altered between angry and curiously inaccurate, as the President compared his political opponents to segregationists and Confederates.
While I don’t agree with McConnell on everything, he absolutely nailed it with his assessment of the President’s speech in which his main goal seemed to be dividing Americans even further.
The Kentucky Republican hammered Biden for invoking the Civil War “to demonize Americans who disagree with him” and noted that the President compared “a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors.”
“How profoundly, profoundly unpresidential,” McConnell said. “Look, I’ve known, liked, and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday.”
McConnell: A year ago, Biden “said that politics need not be a raging fire” & “every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. But yesterday, he said anyone who opposes smashing the Senate…is a domestic enemy…like Jefferson Davis…Rhetoric unbecoming of a” POTUS pic.twitter.com/yQlIPoUk7U
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 12, 2022
McConnell Says Biden’s Speech Was Unpresidential
President Biden, in his speech earlier this week, unleashed the same racial rhetoric he has employed for years.
The man who once warned black voters in Virginia that the relatively milquetoast Mitt Romney was going to put “y’all back in chains” implied that opposition to the Democrats’ voting reform bill was tantamount to being a segregationist or Confederate.
“Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he asked.
The president,” McConnell explained, “delivered a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart.”
“Twelve months ago, this president said we should see each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors,” he continued. “Yesterday, he called millions of Americans his domestic enemies.”
.@LeaderMcConnell: Biden “delivered a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart…He compared…a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors. How profoundly, profoundly unpresidential…I did not recognize the man at the podium[.]” pic.twitter.com/UnzXDWBFyr
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 12, 2022
Biden Widely Panned
Mitch McConnell wasn’t the only individual to pan President Biden’s divisive speech.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested Biden’s words reveal what he truly thinks of America.
“In his speeches, you can see clearly how Joe Biden feels about America,” Carlson explained. “He’s deeply disappointed in the country, and he’s annoyed with the people who live here.”
“Biden doesn’t cajole voters,” he added. “He harangues and berates them. He patronizes them and issues threats. You caused the corona pandemic. You’re stupid and selfish. No Fourth of July hot dogs until you obey.”
Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who is black, described Biden’s speech comparing his political opponents to segregationists as “offensive” to him as a Southerner and an American.
“I’m insulted that he refuses to recognize the tremendous progress made by Americans, not by Republicans or Democrats, not by black folks or white folks, by Americans coming together to fight for the rights of every single man, woman to vote … how he missed the opportunity to shine the bright light on progress and instead used something that has been proven to be untrue time and time again,” Scott said.
Rather than shining a light on America’s progress, Biden seems to dwell in the distant past—a time when my granddaddy couldn’t use the same sidewalk as a white person.
His rhetoric is beyond disingenuous. As a Black southerner whose family lived through Jim Crow, it’s insulting. pic.twitter.com/YuT9oFbDCp
— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) January 12, 2022
Even MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, though he called it a “good speech,” noted that the President was speaking not to actually drum up support for nationalized elections, but to deliver a ‘you’re going to hell’ speech against his opponents.
Biden is out of his mind: MSNBC’s Al Sharpton: Biden’s voting address was a ‘you’re going to hell’ speech, not a vote-getting onehttps://t.co/pJwjTkq4qi
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) January 12, 2022
Senator Dick Durbin seemed to at least partially agree with McConnell’s assessment that Biden’s speech was a little unpresidential.
“Perhaps the President went a little too far in his rhetoric,” Durbin told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Some of us do, but the fundamental principles and values at stake are very similar.”
“Perhaps the President went a little too far in his rhetoric… But the fundamental principles and values at stake are very, very similar,” Sen. Dick Durbin says about Biden’s remarks on voting rights in which he referenced Jefferson Davis and Bull Connor. https://t.co/PQIos3OHA0 pic.twitter.com/UBwrSjFQwt
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 12, 2022
When Dick Durbin and Al Sharpton think you went a little off the rails, you know you’ve truly accomplished something.
When asked about McConnell’s response to his presidential speech, Biden replied that he views the Minority Leader as “a friend.”
A friend who, in his mind, sides with racists, segregationist, and confederates.
