On Wednesday evening, after the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States, a contributing writer for The New York Times offered his own perspective on how Biden could bring his message of “unity” to the country, mocking conservatives by insinuating some would be happy if former Vice President Mike Pence was lynched.
“Aha! Biden proposes policies I dislike, HIS CALL FOR UNITY IS A LIE!!! is all the forlorn conservative mind can seem to muster. Sad,” Will Wilkinson wrote. “If Biden really wanted unity, he’d lynch Mike Pence.”
blocked, but the List comes for all, @willwilkinson.
✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼 pic.twitter.com/Pj79DUGTAI
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) January 21, 2021
Wilkinson serves as Vice President of Policy at the Niskanen Center, which has stated that “the Senate must vote to convict and disqualify Trump from any future federal office without delay” and “Members of Congress who vouched for the president’s lies about election fraud must also be sanctioned for their role.” The Center also opposes the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Wilkinson wrote one month after the 2020 election that the Trump administration was “incompetent”:
Having spent the past four years with the political equivalent of heavy metal music blasting outside their psychic windows late into the night, millions of Americans are hoping that the Biden administration will usher in a new era of calm. To a limited extent, such wishes will be granted. Under President Joe Biden, the White House will no longer generate a cacophony of incompetence.
He also ripped the GOP:
… the GOP is ever more invested in a set of interlocking resentments – of liberal elites, of Black Americans, of feminism and nontraditional sexual identities, of immigrants, of rich cities, of poor cities, of all the emerging and dynamic quarters of the U.S. economy. Other than its bedrock commitment to upward redistribution of national wealth, the party’s compact with its voters entails little more than punishing weaker enemies or owning empowered libs.
During the presidential season of 2016, Wilkinson wrote of Donald Trump vis-à-vis Hillary Clinton:
Trump’s going to give us a spectacular masterclass in shameless demagogic de-legitimating tactics. She can’t be authoritative because she’s a woman. She’s too authoritative, so she’s barely a woman at all. What’s the point of a woman trying to act like a man when you can just get yourself a man? She’s ugly. If she can’t stand up to her rapist husband, she’s too weak to stand up for you. She’s a shameless opportunist who put up with humiliation for power, but people who will put up with humiliation don’t deserve power. She’s in the pocket of the Saudis. She’s in the pocket of the banks.
He added:
Hillary needs anti-Trump people to actively promote her claim to legitimacy, but so many of them are so invested in her lack of it that they prefer to work for Trump instead by reinforcing the fact that Hillary, like Trump, is unacceptable and unworthy of support. Trump understands how this works and knows this antipathy to HRC work to his advantage, even if it comes from people who say they like him even less. This is the dynamic that has me worried.