His calls for civility in the wake of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life are directed almost exclusively to Republicans.
To put a twist on the old saying, if you have to say that you’re willing to “demonstrate to the American people that I have all my faculties,” you’ve already failed. But that is what President Joe Biden pledged to do in a confrontational — indeed, at times hostile — interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt. Biden bristled at the suggestion that he was unfit for office. He barked at Holt and his colleagues in the press for somehow failing to cover Trump’s “lies.” He cosseted himself in an alternate reality in which the polls continue to show a “close race” for the presidency, and he indulged his bitterness over the extent to which age represents a deficit for him but not his opponent, who is only three years his junior. In short, the president did nothing to address his party’s apprehensions over his renomination — yes, again.
But beyond doing himself no favors, Biden may have further weakened his political position by demonstrating that his calls for civility and prudence in the wake of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life apply almost exclusively to Republicans.
In a rare Oval Office address ahead of Monday night’s interview with NBC News, Biden rattled off a series of episodes from the recent past meant to illustrate the growing threat of domestic political violence. But the episodes he chose — January 6, the attack on Paul Pelosi, and the FBI sting operation that both incepted and uncovered a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer – all cut in one ideological direction. In extemporaneous remarks Biden provided Holt, Americans learned that this was not an oversight attributable to Biden’s speechwriters alone.
When Biden was pressed to identify the Democratic rhetoric that should be retired in this new environment, Biden couldn’t think of any. Rather, the distastefully heated talk Biden finds objectionable are all on the Republican side of the aisle.
The president dwelled on the former president’s agitation in the run-up to the Capitol riot. He discussed what he said was the impetus for his 2020 election bid, the conflict in Charlottesville in 2017, in which a woman was killed. He chided Trump for refusing to accept the validity of election results and calling his opponents “vermin,” and he revealed his own hurt when he was confronted with a yard sign that read “eff Biden” and featured an image of a kid holding up a “middle finger.”
“This doesn’t sound like you’re turning down the heat,” Holt rightly observed. Biden’s reply suggests Holt was correct. “We have to stop the whole notion that there are certain things that are contrary to our democracy that we’re for,” he replied in what I assure you is an accurate transcription of a complete sentence uttered by the president.
“When you say there’s nothing wrong with going to the Capitol, breaking in, threatening people, a couple cops dying, putting up a noose — a gallows — for the former vice president,” Biden mused, “and somehow — and then you say you’re going to forgive people for that, you’re going to pardon them? That is not a normal response.”
Democrats were already scurrying to retake the moral high ground in the days following the attempt on Trump’s life, but Biden’s remarks likely set that project back. The president seems to be of the mind that he can set a standard for everyone but himself. As Biden insisted when asked if it’s still “appropriate” to make Trump’s legal woes into a campaign trail issue, the president replied curtly, “I can talk about what I think is appropriate.” It has yet to be determined whether his fellow Democrats agree.