President Biden said former president Donald Trump and the ‘MAGA Republicans’ represent “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic” during a speech on Thursday night.
“Now I want to be very clear up front not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans are MAGA Republicans,” Biden said in his remarks, which were touted as a “soul of the nation” address.
He added: “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans and that is a threat to this country.”
Biden went on to say that MAGA Republicans “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.”
“They refuse to accept the results of a free election and they’re working right now as I speak in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies,” he added.
Biden claimed “MAGA forces are determined to take this country 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.”
The president’s comments come after Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he was “going to look at everything that we can do to deal with these issues” after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Let’s face it: This is a MAGA Supreme Court — a MAGA, right-wing extremist Supreme Court — very, very far away from not only where the average American is, but even the average Republican,” Schumer said earlier this year.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court “should reconsider” its decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to contraception, privacy in the bedroom, and same-sex marriage, respectively.
Thomas’s reasoning was that the Court’s majority found that a right to abortion was not a form of “liberty” protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. He said the Court therefore had a duty to “correct the error” in the other three precedents, which relied upon the same legal reasoning as Roe. He wrote that after “overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions” protected the rights established in the three cases.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the ruling does not affect issues other than abortion.
On Thursday, the president went on to say there is “no place for political violence in America. Period. None. Ever.”
He cited several examples of political violence, including attacks against law enforcement during the Capitol riot, intimidation and death threats against poll works, and threats against FBI agents.
“On top of that there are public figures from today, yesterday and the day before predicting and all but calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets,” he added. “This is inflammatory. It’s dangerous. It’s against the rule of law. And we the people must say, this is not who we are.”
However, while President Biden spent his speech criticizing “MAGA Republicans,” Democrats have come under fire repeatedly since 2020 for endorsing political violence, first amid the nation’s racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd and later when the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel responded to Biden’s speech on Thursday noting that the president’s “wretched attacks on millions of Americans have fueled attacks on pregnancy centers, Republican offices, and an assassination attempt on a Supreme Court Justice” — referring to a California man’s foiled assassination plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
She added: “Joe Biden is the divider-in-chief and epitomizes the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”
Ahead of Biden’s address, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the speech would not be a political one, despite the president making direct attacks against Republican lawmakers.
Near the close of his speech he claimed, “We need to see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.”
Earlier on Thursday, Jean-Pierre told reporters that the president planned to talk about protecting freedom and that those who disagree with him are “extreme.”
“When you are not with where majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking,” she said.