White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden thinks “Make America Great Again” Republicans are an “extreme threat to our democracy.”
“The president has been clear that he thinks there’s an extremist threat to our democracy. The president has been clear as he can be on that particular piece when we talk about our democracy, when we talk about our freedoms,” Jean-Pierre said Wednesday at a press briefing one day ahead of Biden’s prime-time speech focusing on the “battle for the soul of the nation.”
Karine Jean-Pierre says that people who voted for Donald Trump are “a threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.” pic.twitter.com/8e2fXP2sD7
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) August 31, 2022
“The way that he sees it, is the MAGA [Make American Great Again] Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party. This is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights,” she added.
Jean-Pierre then claimed that MAGA Republicans “just don’t respect the rule of law” and “are pursuing an agenda that takes away people’s rights.”
The press secretary’s comment likening Republicans to extremists comes as part of a wave of polarizing language from the White House. Last week, Biden compared the philosophy of MAGA Republicans to “semi-fascism.”
“What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden said at a donor event in Bethesda, Maryland, on Thursday.
Jean-Pierre defended Biden’s comments as a press briefing on Friday, saying, “what MAGA Republicans have done…You look at the definition of fascism and you think about what they’re doing in attacking our democracy, what they’re doing in taking away our freedoms, taking away our rights, our voting rights. That is what that is.”
Over the weekend, a local GOP office in Seminole County, Fla., was vandalized with a vulgar message reading “Eat sh** fascists,” just days after Biden accused Republicans of “semi-fascism.”