Biden Unleashes Tirade on Pro-Life/MAGA Conservatives – And the Optics Didn’t Help

Last night, President Joe Biden – the would-be unifier of the United States – delivered his speech that he said would be about the battle for the soul of the nation, in which it was thought he would be talking about political unrest. It turned out that the real unrest was the entire speech itself.

Against a red backdrop flanked by military personnel in what one might expect from an authoritarian regime like China or North Korea, President Biden lashed out at Christian conservatives and pro-life Americans in the most divisive political speech I’ve ever seen.

Biden used this moment to demean and vilify what he calls a “MAGA force”:

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.

Did you catch that? If you are a pro-life conservative, and that’s at least the majority of you, YOU are a MAGA Republican, you are taking away peoples’ rights, and you are dangerous to the constitutional republic. President Biden and the Left have turned the word MAGA into the new BoogeyMan. If you are a MAGA Republican, the President of the United States just labeled you an enemy. Let that sink in.

And by the way, my son Logan Sekulow brought up a good point – the blood red backdrop looked much more like the Emperor from Star Wars railing against people than the dignity of the office of the U.S. President deserves. It was unbecoming and the content was dishonest.

President Biden actually dared to call this speech “the battle for the soul of the nation” and then called pro-life conservatives the bad guys. With all due respect Mr. President, the side that wants to abort hundreds-of-thousands of defenseless unborn babies every year – even a month after they’re born – does NOT even represent this country’s soul, let alone defend it.

ACLJ Senior Counsel Global Affairs Mike Pompeo called the President’s performance “one of the most political speeches frankly I’ve ever heard from a President.” I asked the former Secretary of State for his take on President Biden’s strictly one-sided “conversation” with the American people last night. Sec. Pompeo cut through the theatrics and called out the President for what he was really saying:

His [Biden’s] agenda is so disconnected from where the American people are that he has to take half of the American public, including moms raising their kids, taking them to soccer games, veterans, soldiers, all of whom voted for Donald Trump and the policies we had for four years and he now basically says you are outside of the American mainstream, you are an extremist. This was a radical speech. This was an extreme speech. The visuals were terrible. I’m not sure who thought this was a good idea on his advance team, but it made him look disconnected in ways that I think will not only hurt him politically, but are so divisive, and so inconsistent – what he tells us every day he wants to do – that you could only describe that speech last night as a way to gaslight Americans and tell them things that we all know are simply not true.

Sec. Pompeo referenced the strange visuals of the speech, and I agree. It would be impossible to discuss last night’s speech without addressing the optics. Whoever came up with this backdrop managed to turn Philadelphia’s Liberty Hall into a horror movie set. The blood red lighting with two U.S. Marines in dress blues standing at attention behind this man whose blundering of the Afghanistan withdrawal led to the death of 13 of their brothers and sisters in arms one year ago. It’s outrageous and offensive. 

And that’s not even addressing the sheer absurdity of President Biden calling conservatives “semi-fascis[t]” while taking part in this scathing diatribe against actual American citizens that so closely resembled speech footage of other despots throughout history. The irony is thick. And at times, downright chilling.

Sec. Mike Pompeo, a decorated U.S. veteran as well, agreed that the optics of the President’s speech were actually offensive and disrespectful toward our military:

To have two Marines in their dress blues standing in Independence Hall while the President is railing against half of the American people. The American people who by definition are trying to make America great, right? This is the MAGA word that he throws around. He calls us semi-fascists. I just keep coming back to he didn’t talk about his inflation reduction act. He didn’t talk about his school debt forgiveness program. These are things that are wildly unpopular and it’s made inflation run rampant in America.

And so he has to turn to almost a panicked call that the other side is just real extremist and so you have to walk away from these people who are ordinary citizens who love our republic deeply and who’ve worked and defended our nation, and who care about the unborn and trying to protect those lives – he called those people semi-fascist MAGA Republicans and said that we’re trying to destroy the republic. That is not the way a President who even pretends to want to unify the nation would speak, and the backdrop against which he said it made it all the worse.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast includes in-depth analysis of the President’s divisive – and as Logan said, sometimes horrifying – speech and what it means as far as the November midterm election, and the remaining two years of President Biden’s term. One thing I will tell you, based solely on watching the speech, President Biden is running for re-election, which means if President Trump announces another White House bid, it is possible we could see Trump v. Biden again in 2024. Time will tell how 2020 Biden voters feel after four years.

Watch the full broadcast below: