The American people’s vocal rejection of President Joe Biden has caused the 46th president to suffer “more vulgar and widespread” criticism than any president in modern times, possibly ever, The Washington Post has claimed.
“[I]t’s clear that after nine months in office, Biden — or at least what he represents — is increasingly becoming an object of hatred to many Trump supporters,” wrote Ashley Parker and Carissa Wolf on Saturday.
Former presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump “were all heckled” with “[b]oos, jeers and insults,” and “‘F— Trump’ graffiti adorned some walls in Washington,” admit Parker and Wolf. “The current eruption of anti-Biden signs and chants, however, is on another level, far more vulgar and widespread.”
While stadiums of sports fans have chanted, “F*** Joe Biden” — and, since a misbegotten NBC report, “Let’s Go, Brandon!” — the level of vitriol and vulgarity Biden has experienced pale in comparison to the hatred, death threats, and simulated assassination attempts directed at his two most recent Republican predecessors.
During an August 2015 discussion with CNN’s Don Lemon, sometimes Republican strategist Rick Wilson called candidate Donald Trump a “douche canoe” who lacks “gravitas.”
As Donald Trump’s presidency began, the 2017 Women’s March clogged the capital’s streets with a sea of hats shaped to look like female reproductive anatomy. In later years the p**sy hats, which some protesters even placed atop a statue of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, became controversial because they excluded men who identify as women.
Far-Left Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) married vulgar anti-Trump rhetoric with threats to overturn an election shortly after her own election, saying in January 2019 that she told her young child, “We’re going to impeach the mother f***er.” Her campaign later sold t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase.
But it was the immediate and persistent threat of assassination that placed the Trump presidency “on another level” from sports chants featuring carnal verbs. The Women’s March culminated with ‘80s singer Madonna saying, “Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I’ve thought a lot about blowing up the White House.” But, she said, “I know it won’t change anything.”
Actor Johnny Depp made a rambling reference to assassinating President Trump while overseas. “I think Trump needs help,” Depp said at a British film festival in January 2017. “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”
The following month, comedienne Sarah Silverman seemingly called for a military insurrection against President Trump, tweeting, “ONCE THE MILITARY IS W US FASCISTS GET OVERTHROWN. MAD KING & HIS HANDLERS GO BYE BYE.” (All caps in original.)
Soon, the Left escalated beyond merely talking about assassinating President Donald Trump to depicting and enacting his bloody murder. When a summer 2017 version of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in New York City’s Central Park showed President Donald Trump being brutally stabbed to death, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria tweeted that the play had been “brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece.”
If you're in NYC, go see Julius Caesar, free in Central Park, brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece: https://t.co/RiJJnW3g8V
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) May 31, 2017
Although not as high-brow as Shakespeare in the Park, rapper Snoop Dogg’s 2017 video for the song “Lavender” showed him simulating the assassination of President Trump by shooting a clown who looked like Donald Trump with a toy gun.
Barbara Streisand tweeted a photo showing a high-heel with the word “Pelosi” impaling a bleeding Donald Trump in October 2019.
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) October 19, 2019
Perhaps no one has spouted as much virulent and violent anti-Trump rhetoric as actress and comedienne Kathy Griffin, who took part in an infamous May 2017 photoshoot showing her holding a simulation of President Donald Trump’s severed head. When President Trump hosted an event dedicated to raising awareness of diabetes at the White House last May, Griffin said he should inject himself a “[s]yringe with nothing but air inside it,” adding, “F**K TRUMP.” Then hours after the polls closed during the 2020 election, she retweeted the photo of herself holding Trump’s severed head.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) November 4, 2020
Unfortunately, the Left’s rhetorical embrace of violence did not begin with President Donald Trump.
In May 2004, left-wing radio talk show host Randi Rhodes likened then-President George W. Bush to the least intelligent member of the Corleone family in The Godfather: “Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and [sound of gunfire].” Although she apologized, the following April she played a spot that criticized President Bush’s Social Security reform proposal that featured the sound of someone firing a gun at the “little bastard”:
A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn’t safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here’s your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [Audio sound of four gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little bastard. [Audio of gun being cocked.]
In between her segments, in October 2004, U.K. Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker asked, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?” In 2006, British filmmaker Gabriel Range produced the film Death of a President that depicted the assassination of George W. Bush.
In Bush’s case, the rhetoric spilled over into attempted violence. At a December 2008 press conference in Baghdad, Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw both his shoes at President George W. Bush, who ducked out of the way just in time. Ten years later, The Washington Post’s Amanda Erickson reported:
Zaidi’s protest has made him famous in the Arab world. The Baydan Shoe factory, which manufactured the shoes thrown at Bush, renamed the model the “ByeBye Bush” shoe. The shoe was even briefly honored with a bronze statue at an Iraqi orphanage.
Now, the 39-year-old is running for a seat in the Iraqi parliament.
As of this writing, the number of shoe-throwing incidents in the Biden presidency is zero.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.