I just want to lay down a marker: my advance transcript, posted hours before the transcript was even released yesterday, nailed it.
Here’s the real transcript from the New York Times.
Compare and contrast—and marvel at my powers of precognition. Which I had thought was just satire.
I never would have imagined Biden’s handlers would have thought to set him in front of such a background for such a speech. In our deeply stupid and unserious meme-driven world, it’s hard to imagine none of them realized a tight shot of the president would have him ranting and raving angrily about his political enemies flanked by armed marines, with a background bathed in hellish red under an ink-black sky.
Over at Danmarks Radio, Steffen Kretz can hardly contain his tumescence (“Biden in frontal attack on Trump”)… but the last two paragraphs of his article are interesting:
Donald Trump made cynical use of the fear of foreigners when he was elected in 2016—and all through his time in the White House.
Now Biden is using the fear of Trump and his supporters in an attempt to keep Democratic Party control of both chambers (of Congress) and thereby the political power in Washington.
“Fear of foreigners” is how the left describes the perfectly legitimate topic of illegal immigration. Beyond that, I don’t know what Kretz is talking about. The so-called travel bans that he inherited from Obama? His belief that China represented a danger to the west? What?
Does Kretz even realize that Trump married an immigrant? Does anyone in the establishment media? Do they realize Trump was the first U.S. president with an immigrant wife since John Quincy Adams was president in the 1820s?
(Forget it, Jake, it’s Kretz.)
I can understand why Kretz had to take his shot at Trump, however: because the following sentence is so spot-on that it would risk baffling and alienating his readers if not preceded by a magical “Trump Was and Remains the True Fount of All Evil” incantation:
Biden is using fear to gain and keep power.
Bada-bing. Give the man a prize.
Berlingske went with a surprisingly accurate headline on their homepage (“Joe Biden’s violent speech tonight is going to make many Americans furious”), but it’s weaker tea when one clicks through to the article itself (headlined: “A new version of Joe Biden took to the podium. He is aggressive”). The story by US correspondent Mikkel Danielsen is probably best characterized by a single short passage:
“History shows us that blind loyalty to a leader and a readiness for political violence is fatal to democracy,” said Joe Biden.
That’s not how Joe Biden usually talks.
Mikkel Danielsen hasn’t been paying attention (but we already knew that).
It’s how Joe Biden always talks these days, and his supporters are eating it up. They’re bragging about in on all the cable talk shows, giggling gleefully about it on social meda: it’s Dark Brandon, you guys, it’s a meme, and it’s awesome!
(Hee hee! I love this angry and aggressive new Anakin Skywalker… let’s call him Dark Anakin!)
They’re doing it because of their own blind loyalty to Biden, or more accurately to the one-party state he’s trying to establish. And can anyone—anyone!—seriously question the American left’s “readiness for political violence?” Remember antifa? 2020? 2021? James Hodgkinson’s attempt to massacre the Republican Congressional baseball team? The attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh? The suddenly routine firebombings of pro-life pregnancy centers? The vandalism of Republican offices around the country?
TV2 News has two items about the speech on their homepage:
Biden sees Trump and his supporters as a threat to America’s soul
and
Biden wants to unite the nation, but sees a threat from MAGA Republicans
But both of those stories are topped by TV2’s lead American story today:
The best part of that last article—pegged to a leaked Danish security assessment’s conclusion that another Donald Trump presidency would be bad for Denmark—is where they turn to the usual stable of “experts” to get their thoughts.
“The fundamental problem was that Trump moved or perhaps rather shook the entire foundation of the security architecture that has formed the framework for Danish security and defense for decades,” states Rasmus Brun Pedersen, professor of international politics at Aarhus University.
It was an architecture that needed shaking.
Pedersen doesn’t seem to recall that earlier this year many of Europe’s NATO members, Denmark inclusive, finally committed to increasing their defense budgets—the only real “change” Trump had urged on NATO. A change that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark and former Secretary General of NATO, was also agitating for.
Was our former head of state also shaking the foundation of Danish security?
“His insanity in almost all matters, whether it was NATO, trade agreements, Russia or Greenland. It was like a kindergarten. He had, for example, not understood the game in the Arctic at all,” he adds, referring to Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland from Denmark.
This is a textbook example of the problem with so much criticism of Trump: we get generalities without any specifics. His “insanity in almost all matters” produced the most extraordinary economic growth and the greatest income inequality gap reduction of the modern era. His was the only presidency of the modern era not to put American boots on the ground abroad. His presidency enabled the most rapid production of a vaccine in history. He made America energy independent. He warned against European dependence on Russian energy. He slowed the pace of illegal immigration. And the enemies of the west kept their powder dry for all four years of his presidency.
Which of those insanities do Pedersen and his fellow “experts” object to?
Joe Biden has been president for 18 months and look at the America now.
Hell, look at the world.
Donald Trump says profoundly stupid things. But what he did was good for America.
Joe Biden also says profoundly stupid things. And what he’s doing is bad for America and bad for the world.
Angrily barking out to America that his political adversaries are enemies of America, that they’re a “clear and present danger” to the republic, crosses a line that’s never been crossed before in presidential rhetoric.
And remember—this wasn’t a political speech. This was a policy speech. Nothing political about it.
From the official White House transcript of yesterday’s White House briefing (held prior to the speech):
Q Thanks, Karine. Is tonight a political speech?
MS. JEAN-PIERRE: No, it’s not a political speech. This is an opportunity, again, for the President to directly have a conversation with the — with the — the American people.
Look, he’s going to talk about — of course, he’ll talk about the importance of engagement. He’ll talk about voter — voter participation.
But this is a speech about such a broader subject: you know what it means to be a democracy and what it means to participate in our — in our democracy, given where we are as a nation. And he believes the stakes are very high and that it is important to go out and articulate what those stakes are and why it’s important for people to participate in their democracy and, at the end of the day, why it is worth fighting for.
“Worth fighting for.”
Interesting words to describe a (not at all political) speech accusing Republicans of inciting violence.
I’ll close with a short passage from Biden’s speech followed by a video put out by the RNC a couple of months ago, and then wrap it up with a link to an article that’s just the cherry on top.
First, the quote:
And here, in my view, is what is true: 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.
They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
Next, the video:
And the cherry on top: Molly Ball’s infamous testimonal confession that in the run-up to the 2020 election, the leftist establishment worked to do something that sure sounds a lot like trying “to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
Molly Ball, Time.com, 4 Feb 2021
Featured Image: New York Times photography by Doug Mills. Doctored a little. But less than you’d think.