Jonathan Bronitsky — Daily Mail.com Sept 2, 2022

Less than 24-hours after delivering the darkest, most toxic presidential speech of the modern era, the Commander in Chief is trying to gaslight America to believe he didn’t say what it just heard him say.

‘C’mon, look guys, I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country,’ he told reporters Friday. ‘When people voted for Donald Trump – and support him now – they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol. They weren’t voting for overruling the election. They were going for a philosophy he put forward.’

Let’s roll the tape back.

Here’s what the president asserted Thursday evening outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, which the White House advance team transformed into a scene straight out of Hostel – complete with blood-red uplighting and shadowed figures in the background.

The stage’s backdrop looked more like the demonic spawn pool of Satan rather than the patriotic birthplace of our republic.

‘Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.’

He continued, ‘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 was not talking about a narrow slice of the Republican Party there. He was clearly referring to – and slandering – a major portion of the country that believes in the sanctity of life and steadfastly honors the traditional morality that has made America exceptional.

This wasn’t a slip of the tongue.

Biden was reading prepared marks, approved at multiple levels, that perfectly echoed the rhetoric of his administration.

Consider what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said from the podium of the White House briefing room earlier this week.

‘The MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party,’ she declared. ‘That is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights… this is the most active base of the Republican Party.’

Last week, while speaking at a private Democratic fundraiser, Biden was unambiguous: ‘It’s not just [Donald] Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the – I’m going to say something – it’s like semi-fascism.’

Back in January, while attempting to cram a doomed so-called voting rights bill through Congress, Biden avowed that Republicans who opposed the massive federal takeover of the election system were akin to segregationists and the Confederacy.

‘So, I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered?’ he bellowed on stage at the Atlanta University Center Consortium. ‘Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?’

In Philadelphia, however, Biden wasn’t demonizing elected officials. He was taking square aim at regular citizens.

Again, this was not an instance of uttering the quiet part out loud. What we’re currently witnessing is a desperate – and what will ultimately prove – a futile attempt at damage control.

Biden spewed what his few supporters craved – a partisan oration designed to gin up emotion ahead of the midterms.

If the speech were instead produced as a motion picture, it would have been rated PG-13 for language that goes ‘beyond polite conversation.’ ‘Anger.’ ‘Chaos.’ ‘Carnage.’ ‘Despair.’ ‘Fear.’ ‘Political violence.’ ‘Present danger.’ ‘The shadow of lies.’ ‘Dagger at the throat of our democracy.’

This was all a far cry from the carefully parsed distinctions that the president is attempting to claim today. And now, he – or someone else over at 1600 Pennsylvania – deeply regrets the prime-time appearance

The left foams at the mouth that Trump was divisive and claims that Biden is the antithesis of the former president.

To paraphrase Biden himself, ‘C’mon, guys.’

Can anyone who identifies as a liberal or progressive insist with a straight face that last night’s speech was anything other than a political hit job? Or that it will begin to mend any of the country’s many divides?

Above all on Thursday night, Biden asserted that ‘MAGA Republicans’ – patently meaning anyone who previously or continues to support the prior, duly elected Commander in Chief – are responsible for the ‘assault on American democracy.’

Such audacious and sweeping language means Biden – or whoever wrote his speech – is convinced that his adversaries comprise a significant part of the conservative movement.

If last night’s 24-minute oration were judged as nothing more than a stump speech, objectively, it probably succeeded, at least for the small number of people who bothered to switch over from the opening of college football season.

As an address to the nation as a whole, intended to start bridging divides and save democracy, it was a Kabul-sized catastrophe.

And there’s no walking back from that.

Dr Jonathan Bronitsky served as U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr’s Chief Speechwriter and Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice.

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