“I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat to the country,” Biden told reporters when asked about the distinction. “I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, fails to condemn violence when it’s used, refuses to acknowledge an election has been won, insists upon changing the way in which we rule and count votes, that is a threat to democracy.”
President Biden clarified in detail on Friday which MAGA Trump supporters are a threat to our democracy when asked at a press conference by Peter Doocy.
Biden said those who voted for Trump in 2020 “and support him now, they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol, they weren’t voting for overruling an election.”
“They were voting for the philosophy he put forward,” Biden said.
“So, I am not talking about anything other than, it is inappropriate — and it’s not only happened here, but other parts of the world — where there’s a failure to recognize and condemn violence whenever it’s used for political purposes,” he said. “Failure to condemn the attempt to manipulate electoral outcomes. Failure to acknowledge when an election has been won or lost.”
Biden said it is his duty to level with the people, “to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.”
Presumably, it is also the duty of the mainstream media to level with the American people, to tell these truths, no matter how painful and regardless of how much whining they get in response from Republicans. So too, it is the media’s duty to set aside the cynical “horse race” coverage that can reduce existential issues to little more than political game-playing. And to admit that the typical “both sides” and “partisanship” frameworks don’t apply in a situation where one party has embraced a fascist assault on democracy, while the other party is trying to stop them. It is on the media to prioritize the truth over some ill-fitting “balance” between two parties in an era when one of those parties rejects democracy itself.
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