President Joe Biden delivered an important speech in Philadelphia on Thursday night about the threat that Donald Trump and his followers pose to the future of American democracy. It was fiery and blunt by Biden standards. And there’s probably no better proof that Biden’s speech was desperately needed than the reaction it received online. Trump’s army of whiners and arseholes absolutely lost their shit.
Trump supporters were simply aghast that a president of the United States would deliver such a divisive speech. Can you even imagine if Trump had ever said anything so polarising? Biden said he was going to bring the country together, they whined, not speak frankly about the neo-fascist ideology of Trumpism. How dare Biden be so callous and mean?
What did Biden actually say? He spoke honestly about what will happen if Trump and his acolytes are allowed to retake power.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said, insisting that he wasn’t talking about “mainstream Republicans.”
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy. No right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” Biden said, hinting at efforts to overturn marriage equality at the Supreme Court.
“They promote authoritarian leaders. They fanned the flames of political violence,” Biden said in a reference to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn the 2020 election.
It was all objectively true. But it was way too much for many Trump supporters to hear.
Georgia radio host Erick Erickson, who has previously tweeted approvingly of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s use of helicopters to kill dissidents and who once shot bullet holes through a New York Times article he didn’t like, sent dozens of tweets and retweets Thursday night, absolutely disgusted that President Biden could be so mean to Trump supporters.
“President declares half the country a threat to democracy. He’s flanked by Marines with mid-1930’s German red lighting behind him. Talking heads on CNN and MSNBC love it. Fascism is relative,” Erickson tweeted.
Erickson, like many Trump supporters and even some elected officials, repeatedly compared Biden to Adolph Hitler, sharing altered images of the current president in front of swastikas and with Hitler-style mustaches. Trump’s online troll movement even got the hashtag #pedohitler trending on Twitter overnight.
President Biden is not a popular president, with only about 38% of Americans approving of his job performance, down from 41% a week earlier, according to Reuters. But it’s refreshing to hear a U.S. leader speak plainly about the threat Americans currently face and it will be interesting to see what kind of approval numbers he sees next week after his extremely straightforward speech.
But whatever the reaction in the polls, the backlash we’re seeing online proves that Biden hit a nerve. Trump’s worldview may be hard to pin down into a coherent ideology, but it’s ugly and dangerous, whatever you want to call it. And Trump supporters know, given how unpopular Trumpism is, that they need to mask the anti-democratic nature of the Trump movement — at least until Trump is able to take power again.
Click through to see some of the responses to Biden’s speech on Thursday, along with some helpful context. These people won’t be undone by their hypocrisy, but it’s still important to call it out, just as a reminder that Trumpism’s pearl clutching is always done in bad faith by people who fundamentally reject the notion of democracy.
You Hurt Our Feelings
“Instead of trying to bring our country together to solve the MANY problems he has created, President Biden has chosen to divide, demean, and disparage his fellow Americans — simply because they disagree with his policies. Mr. President: you owe millions of Americans an apology,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted on Thursday night.
Is that the same Kevin McCarthy who said Trump should resign immediately following the coup attempt on January 6, 2021, only to completely reverse course when he realised it was politically advantageous to continue his support Trump? You bet it is.
“Joe Biden is Hitler”
What we all saw tonight from Biden.
I guess when President Butterbeans is frail, weak, and dementia ridden, the Hitler imagery was their attempt to make him look “tough” while he declares war on half of America as enemies of the state.
Or it’s real..
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 2, 2022
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia most famous for blaming forest fires on Jewish space lasers, tweeted an edited video of Biden’s speech where the president is made to look like Hitler.
“What we all saw tonight from Biden. I guess when President Butterbeans is frail, weak, and dementia ridden, the Hitler imagery was their attempt to make him look ‘tough’ while he declares war on half of America as enemies of the state. Or it’s real..” Greene tweeted.
“They chose this imagery. It’s unreal. Joe Biden is Hitler. #NaziJoe has to go,” Greene said in another tweet.
Biden the Communist
“The people who came to America to escape Communism have been telling us so for a few years now. #LiveNotByLies,” tweeted conservative commentator Rod Dreher, apparently trying to compare Joe Biden to a communist dictator.
It’s pretty rich for Dreher, who’s a big fan of Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, to be throwing around those kinds of labels about Joe Biden, the most centrist of centrist politicians.
Rats, Literal and Otherwise
“I can’t believe this is a real photograph. It depicts the president of our nation, as he took to the airwaves and spoke about his fellow citizens as if they were sewer rats,” J.D. Vance, who’s running for Senate in Ohio, tweeted after Biden’s speech.
For the sake of accuracy, it should probably be noted that Biden never used the word “rat” in his speech on Thursday. But Trump not only called his attorney Michael Cohen a rat, he also referred to Baltimore, a major American city, as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
It’s hard to imagine what would happen if Biden said the same about any part of the U.S.
Trump’s Fascism is More Entertaining
“As a Republican who was fine criticising Trump’s speeches and divisiveness, this Biden thing isn’t any different except Biden promised not to do stuff like this. He promised unity and uplifting, not trolling in speeches. At least Trump had better staging and lighting,” Erickson said, no doubt typing with concern on his face.
Erickson, who apparently had no idea China was an ally of the United States against Japan during World War II, consistently views himself as above the fray in politics, while trotting out the most tired Republican talking points each and every day.
So. Many. Periods.
Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican Party, went with a more succinct version of MAGA outrage than most of her Trump supporting counterparts on Thursday.
“Angry. Divisive. Political. Stubborn. Failure,” McDaniel tweeted after the speech.
How’s. Your. Uncle. Mitt. Romney. Doing. Ronna. He. Hasn’t Mentioned. Biden’s. Speech. Yet.
Former Florida Governor Pops His Monocle
“I hear this raving lunatic attacked half the country tonight because they don’t agree with his liberal agenda to spend us into oblivion, open our borders, and send an army of IRS agents into our homes. I’m pretty happy being on the opposite side of that guy,” Rick Scott, the former Florida governor and current U.S. Senator, tweeted about Biden.
Senator Scott’s speech at CPAC back in March was actually typical of the far-right rhetoric President Biden was warning about on Thursday.
“We survived the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I and World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. But today we face the greatest danger we have ever faced. The militant left-wing in our country has become the enemy within,” Scott said at CPAC earlier this year.
“The militant left has now seized control of our economy, of our culture and our country.The woke left now controls the Democrat party, the entire federal government, the news media, academia, big tech, Hollywood, most corporate boardrooms and now even some of our top military leaders,” Scott said.
“They are destroying just about everything they touch and they’ve got their hands on everything,” Scott said. And the speech, which is completely unhinged, only got more MAGA from there.
Area Mum Concerned About Dark Brandon’s Tone
Jenny Beth Martin, the woman who organised an infamous press conference in front of the Supreme Court about hydroxychloroquine as a secret treatment for covid-19 back in 2020, took issue with Biden’s language on Thursday.
“For centuries oppressive governments have used derogatory labels and incendiary language to target and debase their political opponents. What Biden is doing is no different. Biden is telling the country that over 70 million Americans are their enemy,” Martin tweeted.
It’s worth noting that Martin, who’s often positioned in right-wing media stories as simply a concerned parent but is actually the head of an anti-tax group called the Tea Party Patriots, was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 with a megaphone.
Dark Brandon Goes Soviet
“The most divisive speech in my lifetime from behind the Seal of the President of the United States. A speech that denigrates those that didn’t vote for him as a threat to democracy and the rule of law. It belongs behind a more appropriate seal,” Jeremy Redfern, Deputy Secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tweeted on Thursday.
What’s the “more appropriate seal”? The Soviet sickle and hammer, apparently.
This is Unprecedented
“Never before has a President shown such hatred for his fellow Americans,” Lauren Boebert, the congresswoman from Colorado, tweeted on Thursday.