President Joe Biden trashed Trump supporters as “garbage” in a rant on Tuesday evening that sparked outrage and sent Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign into damage control mode.
But they were no surprise: not only has he often used violent language toward Trump — he suggested drowning the former president earlier on Tuesday — but Biden has also trashed millions of Trump supporters, to the media’s and the Democrats’ cheers.
This time, finally, it had a cost.
In June 2020, then-candidate Biden told an online town hall moderated by actor Don Cheadle that “There are probably anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the people out there that are just not very good people.” Given a population of roughly 350 million Americans, Biden was condemning as many as 50 million of his countrymen.
That would amount to two-thirds of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Biden reiterated his views as president. In his infamous “Dark Brandon” speech in Philadelphia in 2022, Biden condemned what he called the “MAGA Republicans.” He claimed that they were not the majority of Republicans, but went on to trash them: “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.” He called them a “clear and present danger” to the rest of the nation.
Two years later, with half of America lining up behind the movement to Make America Great Again, it is clear that the vast majority of Republicans are, in fact, “MAGA Republicans,” at least for now.
As the Madison Square Garden rally showed — despite the “Nazi” smears — they are also ordinary people, from every walk of life, who love their country, as diverse as New York City.
Biden has never seen that. He said what he meant, and what many Democrats believe.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.