What will Biden say about MAGA Republicans in his speech tonight?
The White House has released speech excerpts which show that the President will warn of the threat to democracy from extremist groups in the US.
The year began with a tough few months for President Biden and the Democrats. Inflation soared, gas prices reached record levels and the President struggled to push through key elements of his agenda.
However all three of those trends have been reversed in recent weeks with economic progress and legislation movement. This has clearly emboldened Biden and he will tonight give a speech on the ‘soul of the nation’ from Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park.
The focus of his prime time address will be the extremist ‘MAGA Republicans’ who continue to hold serious sway in the party. More than 100 Republicans who were successful in the recent primary elections were proponents of the election lie pushed by Trump and his allies regarding his 2020 election defeat.
A White house official has confirmed ahead of the address that Biden “will talk about the direct threats to democracy from MAGA Republicans and the extremism that is a threat right now to our democratic values.”
The official said that Biden will say that MAGA supporters are part of “a movement that does not recognize free and fair elections, a movement that increasingly is talking about violence in response to actions that they don’t like or don’t agree with, which is not the way democracies behave.”
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White House releases excerpts of Biden’s speech
Going beyond the words of the White House official, the Biden administration has also released excerpts from the speech ahead of the address. The focus of Biden’s ire has been left to no doubt and the White House is clearly eager to ensure that eyes are on the President for his prime time address.
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” Biden will say, according to the White House.
“For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed,” reads the excerpts release late Thursday afternoon. “But it is not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us.”
For days the White House has been briefing about the importance of tonight’s speech and it will likely form the basis of the Democrats’ campaign points looking ahead to the November midterms.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News: “You think about the battle continues, and so what the president believes, which is a reason to have this in prime time, is that there are an overwhelming amount of Americans, majority of Americans, who believe that we need to ... save the core values of our country.”
She added: “The president thinks that there is an extremist threat to our democracy.”