President Joe Biden is holding on to the hope that he will be the harbinger of a more united country despite describing “MAGA Republicans” as subscribers of “semifascism” and threats to democracy.
Two weeks after condemning former President Donald Trump supporters, particularly those who have not denounced him over Jan. 6, Biden convened the White House’s first United We Stand Summit. But although the focus of Thursday’s conference was hate-fueled violence, Republicans have underscored political violence’s absence from the agenda.
BIDEN AND DEMOCRATS LOSING GRIP ON HISPANIC VOTERS
Republicans are imploring Biden to address personally the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, pregnancy center firebombings, and GOP office vandalism as he warns of MAGA Republicans before November’s midterm elections.
Republican strategist John Feehery slammed Biden’s summit as “mistimed.” The White House had previewed Biden’s desire to “rally a whole-of-society response to prevent, respond to, and recover from hate-fueled violence, and to foster national unity” at the gathering.
“Biden should call for unity right after the Republicans take back the Congress and then move aggressively to the political center,” Feehery told the Washington Examiner. “We are two months before an election that Democrats are most likely to lose, so for him to call for unity now is obviously a political ploy and … will be seen as such by most voters.”
John Pitney, a former Republican staffer who is now a Claremont McKenna College politics professor, downplayed complaints about the possible hypocrisy of Biden’s message. “There is no perfect voice for unity” in “a deeply divided country,” Pitney contended.
“Partisans will question the motives of anyone who even hints at any criticism of their side,” he said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre similarly dismissed a Washington Post reporter who implied Thursday before Biden’s appearance at the summit that his “MAGA Republicans” rhetoric had contributed to disunity.
“He’s worked with mainstream Republicans on a whole range of issues, including efforts to reduce violence and promote public safety like the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant piece of legislation to reduce gun violence in nearly 30 years,” Jean-Pierre said. “So the president is hosting this event to highlight that the vast majority of Americans, despite our myriad of differences, are united in opposition to hate violence.”
Biden also defended himself from his MAGA Republican detractors in Michigan this week during a Democratic National Committee fundraiser as Trump accentuates the contrast between the two 2020 candidates and their parties. Biden did not mention his “semifascism” remark.
“A threat to democracy can almost be defined by saying: If you call for political violence or you defend it and you don’t allow for the legitimate transfer of power, that’s when democracy is at risk,” he said. “That’s why those who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we’ve got to be stronger, more determined, more committed to saving American democracy than the extreme MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy.”
Consecutive polls have captured the public’s concerns regarding democracy, including a Reuters-Ipsos survey released last week. Pollsters found that 58% of respondents consider “Trump’s ‘MAGA’ movement” to be “threatening America’s democratic foundations.”
During the summit, which coincided with the International Day of Democracy, Biden told the crowd assembled in the White House East Room, “White supremacists will not have the last word on this venom, and violence cannot be the story of our time.”
After reflecting on the 2017 unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, which Biden cites as his reason for running for president, he encouraged the group not to be deterred by “those who are talking about this as somehow we’re a bunch of wacko liberals” as well.
“For those who say if we bring this up, we just divide the country: Bring it up, we silence it,” he said. “We have to face the good, the bad, and the truth. That’s what great nations do, and we’re a great nation.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke earlier during the summit, cited how hate crimes across the country surged in 2020 to the highest rate in more than a decade. She also referenced her two trips to Buffalo, New York, where 10 black people were murdered at a Tops Friendly Market in May by a shooter who had espoused the far-right “Great Replacement” theory online.
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Initiatives announced Thursday include Dignity.us, a project fostering dialogue across communities coordinated by four former White House domestic policy advisers and former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Gerald Ford’s centers or foundations.
