During his victory speech in 2020, Joe Biden pledged “to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify; who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States.” Flash-forward to 2022, less than two years into his presidency, and it’s evident that Biden has all but ditched that sort of messaging completely.
On Wednesday, Biden declared that “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history,” in reference to former President Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again.” And why did Biden launch such an attack on nearly half the country’s voters? Biden took issue with Republicans who support the end of Roe v. Wade. If you support the idea that legal abortion should be sent back to the states, you’re a radical, in Biden’s mind.
As numerous outlets and politicians have pointed out, Biden’s remark was befuddling for a number of reasons, chief among them leftist extremism as well Biden’s past opposition to Roe.
On Wednesday evening, The New York Post wrote a scathing editorial, blasting Biden’s legal misunderstanding of the potential legal ramifications of Roe being overturned based on the leaked opinion draft written by Justice Samuel Alito. During his comments, Biden wondered aloud whether or not red states will begin filing proposed laws that would ban LGBT children from classrooms. But that isn’t even remotely on the table, nor would the end of Roe allow for that. The Post pointed out to the president that “the leaked draft opinion takes great pains to explain why Roe is unique, its reversal is no reason to expect a similar undoing of the gay-marriage ruling and other expansions of Americans’ constitutional rights.”
Furthermore, the Post argued that “Biden conveniently forgets (or, who knows with him, maybe he really doesn’t recall) that he himself was anti-Roe for at least a decade.”
“I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far,” he told the Washingtonian in 1974. The Post also noted that in 1982 Biden supported a constitutional amendment that was nearly identical to the leaked potential draft decision. That amendment would have recognized abortion as a states’ rights issue.
So does Biden consider himself to be a reformed extremist? That’s unlikely. Instead, his comments are simply more of the same division that’s come to be expected from the president, Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) explained to Fox News.
“In our politics, you have people who very vehemently disagree on what the policy should be, and frankly, what the politics should be,” Donalds said Thursday morning. “But when you do this to Americans when you try to divide them because of who they support to be president of the United States in the future or who they’ve supported in the past, that is outrageous. I thought Joe Biden wanted to stand for unity. He’s never stood for that. He’s been one of the most divisive presidents we’ve ever had.”
Biden’s comments would indicate that MAGA supporters are more extreme than the violence perpetrated by radical leftists like the Weather Underground during the 1970s. He even ignores the string of tragedies in the past year seemingly inspired by black nationalism, such as an attack on the Capitol that left one dead in April 2021. Nor does he seem to recognize the Black Panthers, “antifa” activists, and a wide variety of other actual extremist political organizations on both ends of the political spectrum.
Even if Biden were solely referencing the capitol protest that turned into a riot over the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021, the “MAGA crowd” still wouldn’t rise to earn the distinction as the “the most extreme political organization” in recent American history — especially not for merely opposing Roe.
Biden, of course, is the same man who told a group of people, including hundreds of African Americans, that GOP presidential and vice presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan wanted to “put y’all back in chains.” It certainly was a racially explosive comment to make and one that earned sharp criticism from the Romney camp.
Biden’s comments in 2012 and 2022 indicate he does not have any genuine concern for American democracy, fighting extremism, or whatever else the Left likes to say these days to justify such rhetoric. Telling black people the GOP wants to put them back in chains is just as ludicrous as saying that some 74 million voters are extreme for wanting to end Roe.
It would appear his true intent with these sorts of comments is to simply denigrate anybody who opposes the Democratic Party’s agenda, whatever it may be.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.