Yet Another Day That Will Live in Infamy
I thought President Biden’s speech yesterday commemorating the anniversary of the January 6 attempted coup insurrection was excellent. And strong. And blunt. And clearly angry.
The question I wondered beforehand was if he was going to mention Trump’s name, and I had mixed feelings – but after seeing the speech and with no mention of Trump specifically by name, just many references to “the former president,” I thought it was the proper choice. There was no reason to mention Trump by name – in fact, it added a sort of decency and grace to the bluntness. And further, as much as Trump later said he hated the speech, it probably bothered him most that his name wasn’t mentioned. (In fact, there’s no “probably” about it since among Trump’s comments was his complaint that Biden “used my name to further divide America” – when in reality Biden didn’t mention his name at all. But Trump’s fragile ego had to insist people think that his name did get mentioned.
Actually, for all the strength and thoughtfulness of the speech, my favorite part was when Biden went after that Trump ego (which I’m sure was very intentional) and said, “He's not just a former president -- he's a DEFEATED former president. Defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes.” It was structured beautifully, even by the Rule of Three: former president, defeated former present, defeated by over seven million votes. That all must have galled Trump. And Biden even repeated it in my other favorite part –
That’s when Biden wonderfully brought up a point I’ve written about often, including on these pages – how strange it is that Trump and Republicans claim there was fraud with the ballots…yet they don’t say a single word about all the other races on the exact same ballots that they won. To which Biden added that the former president didn’t complain about those races because “the former president didn't lose those elections. He just lost the one that was his own.”
And I loved the line, “You can't love your country only when you win." It’s a wonderful statement. And yes, I’m sure the MAGA base will insist they did win. But there are plenty of Republicans who aren’t part of the MAGA base – and lots of independents.
Again, I thought it was extremely good. And very pointed and blunt. And repeatedly calling out “the former president.”
By the way, a follow-up note related to this. On Wednesday, I wrote about how the Republican Party not only didn't participate in the U.S. Congress's ceremonies commemorating the anniversary of the January 6th attempted coup, but for some bizarre reason chose to make an official "response" to the President memorializing the day -- and even worse, selected it to be made by Matt Gaetz (who's under investigation by the FBI for child sex trafficking) and Marjorie Tayler Greene (who has been stripped of all her House committee assignments and been banned permanently by Twitter. I noted that this couldn't end well for the GOP. And...not surprisingly, it didn't. It turns out that Ms. Greene was so utterly reprehensible and lunatic that deeply far-right Newsmax (which had been covering the "response") actually cut her off mid-rant. Yes, you read that right -- Newsmax! This is who the Republican Party is today.
Back to President Biden, if you only saw excerpts of his speech on the news, here’s the full thing, about 24 minutes.
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