Balloons and the Border: 2024 GOP Primary Contenders Tear into Biden’s State of the Union Unity Message

Likely 2024 contenders were quick to respond when President Biden’s State of the Union address, which he advertised as a call for unity, veered into partisan attacks.

Standing before a joint session of Congress, Biden accused Republicans of wanting to “take the economy hostage” in the debt-ceiling negotiations: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.”

The president also took a shot at Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, saying, “And my Republican friends who voted against it as well. I still get asked to fund the projects in those districts as well, but don’t worry. I promised to be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.”

The pool of likely 2024 GOP contenders wasted no time calling Biden out for his divisive speech and his policy failures.

Former president Trump, the only candidate to have formally announced a 2024 bid, offered live reaction to the speech on his Truth Social account. “He’s lying so much about Social Security, Medicare, and so many other things!” Trump wrote.

At one point Trump took aim at Republicans in the audience saying, “I notice Mitt Romney and some of the RINOs jumping up and down with applause for the wrong reasons!” 

The former president then published a two-minute pre-recorded video immediately at the conclusion of the speech, which he introduced as the “real State of the Union.”

In the short speech, Trump called attention to the border crisis, placing blame on Biden for the millions of illegal immigrants who have “stormed across our southern border.” He also accused Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department and said, “I’m a victim of it.” Trump is facing a criminal investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“But the good news is we are going to reverse every single crisis, calamity, and disaster that Joe Biden has created,” Trump said. “I am running for president to end the destruction of our country and to complete the unfinished business of making America great again.”

Former vice president Mike Pence said Biden’s State of the Union “showed one thing: That it is time for new Republican leadership to get our Nation back to the strength and prosperity we had under the Trump-Pence Administration.”

Pence posted a list of examples of Biden’s “failed leadership at home,” including “worst border crisis in history, inflation still near a 40-year-high, gasoline prices still up 50 percent, crime has skyrocketed, wages are plummeting,” and an “all-encompassing left-wing culture war on American values.” He also shared a list of examples of Biden’s “failed leadership abroad,” including the “disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, attempts to restart Iran Nuclear Deal,” and “North Korea firing missiles again.”

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who is expected to formally announce her own 2024 bid on February 15, released a video ahead of the speech criticizing Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling it “one of the most consequential failures of his presidency.”

“America deserves better than Joe Biden. It’s time for a new generation of leadership,” Haley tweeted at the conclusion of the speech.

Throughout the speech she wrote tweets urging Biden to “stop turning America into China’s doormat” and to “hold Beijing accountable for COVID, stop China from buying American farmland, impose consequences for China’s spying, and start acting like the leader of the free world.”

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem similarly criticized Biden on China: “58 minutes. That’s how long it took @JoeBiden to mention the word China.”

Biden failed to explicitly mention the Chinese spy balloon that was seen hovering over sensitive military facilities in Montana last week, instead gesturing to the delayed downing of the balloon as a show of American resolve. Republicans don’t see it that way, pointing out that it took the administration eight days to shoot down the aircraft, after it had already presumably accomplished its intelligence-gathering mission.

Noem added: “Where Biden is failing to take on the China threat, here in South Dakota we are hitting it head-on with SB 185 which will prevent the purchase of SD land by countries like China who hate America.”

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said, “Hate to burst your bubble, @JoeBiden, but that national security threat from China should have been addressed as soon as it crossed our border.”

He also called to “get inflation under control NOW” and said of Biden’s divisive statements, “Dividing the nation isn’t the way to bring us together @JoeBiden. I want to find common sense on common ground, and I know we can do it. #SOTU”

He concluded, “Have no doubt, I believe that the best is yet to come, but our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams. It will come from YOU — the American people. #SOTU”

Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan said that despite Biden’s having campaigned on unity the country is “more divided and fed up than ever.” He said “more rhetoric won’t fix any of these urgent challenges or get our country back on track.”

“In November, the American people voted for change because they want to stop the reckless spending, increase our domestic energy production, get tough on violent crime, and address the crisis at the border,” he said. “To fulfill his campaign promise, I urge President Biden to work with Congress to find common sense solutions to these urgent challenges.”

Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is widely seen as Trump’s top opponent despite not having formally announced a bid for president, remained quiet during the speech. 

Despite DeSantis’s best efforts not to engage in any heated 2024 rhetoric, he has once again found himself on the receiving end of attacks from Trump.

The former president recently shared a post on Truth Social that apparently features a 23-year-old DeSantis drinking at a party with high-school students while he was a teacher at a private school in Rome, Ga., from 2001 to 2002. The photo comes from an October 2021 story from Hillreporter.com, a site published by MeidasTouch, a “pro-democracy” super PAC founded “with the primary goals of protecting American democracy, defeating Trumpism and holding Republicans accountable.”

Trump shared a Truth Social user’s post of the picture, which was captioned “Ron Desantis was having a ‘drink’ party with his students when he was a high school teacher. Having drinks with underage girls and cuddling with them certainly look pretty gross and ephebophiliaesque.” 

Trump said, “No way?” 

He also shared another post with the same picture that had a caption reading, “Here is Ron DeSanctimonious grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher.”

Trump replied, “That’s not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing!”

DeSantis responded to a question about Trump’s allegations on Wednesday saying, “I’d just say this. I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden. That’s how I spend my time. I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”

Around NR

• A majority of Democrats said the party should nominate someone other than President Biden for the White House in 2024, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll. Read more about Biden’s bad news here.

• Dan McLaughlin observes that, despite a majority of Democrats not wanting Biden to run for a second term, “no obvious primary challenger appears on the horizon, and the entire apparatus of the Democratic Party is being bent against the emergence of one.”

Few presidents have been so singularly focused on preventing the emergence of a rival within their own party. That is an approach to campaigns and governing that few would have predicted from a man who promised to be a transitional figure to the next generation of Democratic leaders, who was elected with an implicit promise to his party that he was probably only running for one term, and who has become the first president to turn 80 years old in office.

• Charles C. W. Cooke says if voters were “free to choose a president from an unrestricted pool of candidates, there is nobody in America who would choose Joe Biden.” Yet a Republican win in 2024 is far from guaranteed:

Ultimately, politics comes down to a simple question: “As opposed to what?” And however unsuited to the role of president of the United States Joe Biden might now have proven himself to be, it does not follow automatically that the Republican alternative will be deemed more desirable.

• On the question of how many candidates in the 2024 Republican presidential primary is too many, Jeffrey Blehar writes:

In essence, you cannot pin your hopes exclusively on a single candidate (particularly if your goal is to ensure that a far more competent and electable candidate than Trump seizes the nomination) because unfortunate things happen. . . . Plan accordingly and realize that a one-on-one field this early is not truly what serves Republican interests (and the interests of sanity) the best.

• Trump is getting squeezed from the left and the right, Michael Brendan Dougherty says, noting that Biden has “stolen most of Trump’s economic and geopolitical themes. And Ron DeSantis is running out ahead of Trump on cultural issues”:

Trump needed his issue set to win over Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If that’s taken away from him, trying to win again would be like navigating the Atlantic on a small ice floe in the middle of summer. The chances of success are slim.