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Sept. 2, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:18
Joe Biden Gives The Most Dangerous Presidential Speech In Modern History | Ep. 1567
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Joe Biden delivers the most divisive demagogic speech in modern American history, demonizing half the country as opposed to democracy, liberty, and decency, while insisting he was only there to restore unity.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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I, honest to God, never thought I would see something like this from Joe Biden, from really any American president.
Last night, the President of the United States gave the most demagogic, dangerous speech I've ever heard from an American president, truly.
And a lot of people out there right now on the left side of the aisle screaming about Donald Trump in his January 6th speech.
I really hated Donald Trump's January 6th speech.
But what Donald Trump did not do in that speech is declare that half the country was the enemy.
He did not declare that half the country was fundamentally opposed to the basis of the country.
He attacked, I thought wrongly, the quote-unquote political elite who had skewed the election or whatever.
But what he didn't do was label half the country people who were just political opponents, his actual enemies.
He didn't actually do that on January 6th.
And when he talked about the press as the enemies of the people and all of this, the press went nuts.
And I said, he shouldn't have done that.
But that was a talk about the press.
That wasn't everybody who opposes my agenda deserves the back of the American hand.
The president and all of this in the name of democracy and equality, it was insane.
I want to begin with the image of the speech.
This is going to be the takeaway image.
Most people are not going to see the speech.
Most people are not going to listen to the speech.
There's going to be one takeaway image from the speech.
Presidential politics is all about image.
It's all about imagistics.
Whether you're talking about President Trump getting out of a helicopter and taking off his mask in the middle of COVID, or whether you're talking about Barack Obama standing on a giant stage flanked by the Greek Parthenon recreated in 2008.
When you look at this image, the image that you're seeing right now of Joe Biden, This is the single worst piece of presidential image making I have ever seen in my entire life.
It is not close.
This is an astonishingly bad image for the president of the United States, especially when he's declaring, I'm here in defense of democracy, and now I'm going to yell at you about how everyone who opposes me is an enemy of democracy.
Let's count the ways in which this is a horrible piece.
I mean, first of all, let's compare it to some other images just so you see how bad a piece of imagery this is.
It's insane.
How about General Lux from Star Wars The Force Awakens?
It's the same image.
We're talking about the blood red background.
We're talking about the dark outfit, the blood red background, and the people in the background are apparatchiks of the state.
We are talking here about Man in the High Castle, when John Smith is first introduced in the Vauxhall in New York.
I mean, like, it's this sort of imagery.
The people who constructed this image, that was not photoshopped, that picture of Joe Biden.
That was a not photoshopped image.
I mean, scar from Lion King.
It's insane.
What are they doing?
What are they doing?
The answer, by the way, I mean, it's V for Vendetta.
It is all the dictators that you have ever seen in film or on screen basically rolled into one and then wrapped into an image.
What is his team doing?
What is his team doing?
Well, I think the answer is they're a very online team.
The people who work for him, they spend all day on Twitter.
And so over the past few weeks, there's been this idea that Dark Brandon is rising.
Dark Brandon, of course, is that meme that originally started in China of Joe Biden sitting on a throne made of guns with his lit up eyes backlit by flames.
He's evil.
I think that his team was like, you know what?
That was such a cool image, man.
It went viral online.
Let's just recreate that in real life.
And so you end up with this.
You end up with the actual picture of Joe Biden.
Let's go back to the original.
You end up with the actual picture of Joe Biden in this picture.
Now let me describe for people who are just listening what is in this picture.
Joe Biden is standing at the podium.
He's in upshot.
I believe this is from Getty Images.
He is screaming at the top of his lungs.
He's gripping his fists up in the air.
Behind him is Independence Hall, the site of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
Blood red!
Blood red!
And behind him are two American Marines who are in shadow, except for their white-gloved hands.
And behind him, there's a pale light that looks like, because of the way this is lit, it looks like the throne room of the emperor from Return of the Jedi.
It's the worst piece of presidential image making ever.
Truly ever.
I mean, imagine the sort of thought that had to go into this.
And they're sitting around a room and they're like, what can we do to make the president really look cool?
Well, what if we take a historic American site?
You know, the site that really is known for liberty and for democracy and legality.
And what if we light it blood red?
Blood red.
And we put the president in front of the blood red site.
So it'll be red and black, like the fascist color pattern.
Let's do that.
And then what if we actually front light him so he looks angry and demonic against that backdrop?
And then, what if we put a couple of marines behind him to look like military force is what is backing him?
This is a taxpayer-sponsored event, by the way.
You paid for this.
So Joe Biden gave a speech and the speech was designed to attack all of his political opponents and treat them as enemies of the state.
That's what this speech was designed to do.
I think, in a very cynical way, because Joe Biden basically gave you two messages.
One, everyone who opposes me is an enemy of the state.
And two, violence is wrong.
The basic idea here is to raise the temperature.
I think this is more likely to result in acts of violence that Joe Biden is then going to use as a case to run in 2022 and 2024.
I mean, this is extraordinarily dark stuff.
We haven't even gotten to the content of the speech.
Just the imagery alone is extraordinary.
Really dark, really creepy, really fascistic.
And man, did he, I mean, there's a reason that satanic, demonic, and pure evil were all trending on Twitter last night because man, oh man, the imagery associated with the speech.
And you know what?
It fits well within the rhetoric of the speech too.
Because what Joe Biden said last night is, as I say, the most dangerous thing I have seen an American president say about half the country ever, ever in my life.
And I'm sure there are times maybe, maybe before that in American history, but I was born in 1984.
So I can only tell you what I have seen since 1984.
The president of the United States going out there and saying that the half of the country that disagrees with, he has a 38% approval rating, half the country, more than half that disagrees with him, that these are people who are associated with pure evil.
He speaks about his fellow Americans the way that George W. Bush spoke about Al Qaeda.
So, let's actually go through the speech now.
We're going to go through it in real detail.
I want him to speak in his own words.
It's amazing.
So, this thing opens.
Remember, it's a taxpayer-sponsored event, which means he's using all of the power of the office.
This geriatric dotard.
He's using all the power of the office, including taxpayer dollars, and all the imagery of traditional American republicanism, small-r republicanism, in order to prop up a demagogic piece of fascistic speechmaking.
So, here he was at the very beginning, and Jill is walking him out to the podium, because he now needs to be walked from place to place as our president.
And here's what it sounded and looked like.
So there he is.
I mean, he can barely walk.
She's leading him out there.
If this doesn't feel like the death of the Republic to you, whatever would.
He's in front of Independence Hall.
He can barely raise his hand to wave.
Okay, and then she ushers him to the podium, and he moves her off, and then he begins to speak.
So, he starts off by welcoming his fellow Americans.
And by his fellow Americans, he means everyone who agrees with him.
This was a pure campaign speech, but it is laced through with the kind of seething hatred for his fellow Americans that I have not seen.
Truly, it's despicable.
Here's the President of the United States, Captain Unity over here.
My fellow Americans, I speak to you tonight from sacred ground in America.
Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This is where America made its declaration of independence to the world more than two centuries ago, with an idea unique among nations.
That in America, we're all created equal.
First of all, you can hear that he's clearing his throat.
He's not particularly healthy.
But as you can see, this was angry Biden.
There are two versions of Biden that are now present.
There's really three versions of Biden that are present in American public life.
There is doddering fool Biden, can't get a sentence out, can barely speak, is wobbling around, his aides are worried he's going to trip over a wire, falling off bikes and all the rest.
And that's one version of Biden.
Then you have fake empathy Biden, where he goes into his low voice.
He really cares.
That's the stuff where, in completely inappropriate context, he cites the tragic death of his son in order to try and garner empathy for himself while supposedly trying to sympathize with others, right?
That's version number two of Biden.
And then there's angry, yelly Biden.
What we got last night was angry, yelly Biden.
So he continues with what he says are the real message of America.
What is the soul?
He said he was going to speak about the soul of the nation in front of a blood-red background in satanic lighting.
Here he was talking about the soul of the nation.
What is America really all about?
We, the people.
We, the people.
These two documents and the ideas they embody, equality and democracy, are the rock upon which this nation is built.
Okay, so the very basis of his speech, that equality and democracy are the key values of the United States, they are some of the key values of the United States, but he's actually using the wrong language.
Because when he says equality, what he means is equity.
He's made this very, very clear throughout his presidency.
Equity means equality of outcome.
It does not mean you have equal rights under the Constitution.
That is not what he cares about.
He cares about equality of outcome.
And if you oppose that, you're against equality.
And when he says democracy, as it turns out, he does not mean The kind of republicanism, small-r republicanism, that is discussed in the Constitution of the United States.
The truth is, if you look at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the key messages, truly, are liberty and republicanism, not equality and democracy.
Equality and democracy are hallmarks of the French Revolution.
Because in the French Revolution, the whole idea was that it was égalité, liberté, fraternité.
And it was pure democracy.
It was mob rule.
The Founders very much feared the idea of mob rule culminating in a powerful centralized figure who was able to do whatever he wanted without any of the checks and boundaries of the Constitution of the United States.
That's what they feared.
And that's what Joe Biden represents.
So understand, when he says equality and democracy, you're hearing equality of rights and Democratic-Republican rule under the checks and balances of the Constitution.
That's not what he means.
What he means by equality and democracy is something very different.
He means equity and mob rule.
Those are the things that he's actually standing for.
But again, what he's doing is he's hijacking, this whole speech was about hijacking traditional American images and turning them on their head, right?
Independence Hall is now blood red.
Equality and democracy, if you are in favor of a limited government and equality of rights, and you're interested in a checks and balances system that hems in the power of a centralized bureaucratic state, This means, according to Joe Biden, you are against the founding ideals of the country.
So he starts off with all the pretty words, right?
Barack Obama used to do the same thing.
This is not the part of the speech that is perfectly unusual.
Barack Obama also used to sort of hijack traditional American terminology and then turn it on its head, hollow it out.
A lot of Democratic politicians do this.
Some Republican politicians do this, too.
The part of the speech that starts to get bad comes very early.
He starts suggesting that everyone who is his opponent is the same, and they're all bad, and they're extremist threats to democracy.
Here we go.
As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault.
We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.
So tonight, I've come to this place where it all began.
to speak as plainly as I can to the nation about the threats we face.
Okay, so what exactly are the threats that we face?
Well, first he talks about the soul of America.
And there's something particularly galling about this person who does not appear to be, he's a career corrupt politician declaring that he speaks, he declaims on behalf of the American soul.
So he's here on a religious level to lecture you while lit like Satan.
Weird, here we go.
That sacred flame still burns.
Now in our time, as we build an America that is more prosperous, free and just.
you That is the work of my presidency, a mission I believe in with my whole soul.
But first, we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.
So he's going to lay it on the line for you now.
Here's where he gets to the good part.
So he is going to launch into an attack on half Americans.
This is the key to the speech.
Here we go.
Too much of what's happening in our country today is not normal.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
Now I want to be very clear.
Very clear up front.
Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.
Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.
I know, because I've been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there's no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.
And that is a threat to this country.
Okay, so what he's doing right here, the media are saying, well, when he's saying that, you know, a huge percentage of Americans are extremist threats to the country.
By the way, the answer usually to extremist threats to the country is you drone them or arrest them, right?
That's usually what you do.
If you said there's an extremist threat from abroad to the very soul of the republic, that would usually amount to, you know, military response, legal response, people going to jail.
So understand what he's doing.
When he says, you know, that's not a majority of Republicans.
That's not even, that's not everybody.
I know because I've been able to work with those who are not.
So I have a definitional question.
Who is he talking about?
A very simple question.
When he says Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, we know he hates Trump.
We know he thinks Trump's a threat to the Republic.
So put aside Trump personally.
When he says the MAGA Republicans, who is he talking about?
Is he talking about the 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump?
Is he talking about even beyond that?
Anyone who opposes his agenda now?
Because throughout the speech he's going to conflate all of these things.
All the people who voted for Trump?
Anyone who opposes his agenda now?
These are all in league with the MAGA Republicans.
If you're a pro-life person, you're in league with the MAGA Republicans.
Maybe you're a MAGA Republican.
Maybe you are.
Maybe you're a threat to the country.
If you are somebody who doesn't believe in him blowing out the budget, if you don't believe in him spending half a trillion dollars minimum on an unconstitutional student loan ballot, if you don't believe that Joe Biden has the power through OSHA to mandate that you vax, if you don't believe the Democrats have the power to shut down schools and shut down your businesses on the basis of a fake emergency, if you don't believe those things, are you a MAGA Republican or are you not?
He doesn't provide any litmus test.
The only litmus test that he provides in the speech as to who is not a MAGA Republican are Republicans he can work with.
As you'll see, as we go through the speech, that's who he is talking about.
The only people who are the good Republicans are the Republicans who do what he wants.
Those are the people who are not a threat.
Everybody else?
A threat.
Associated with threat.
Everybody else.
The people who are the good Republicans, the ones you don't have to worry about.
If you're out there, and you're a Republican, and you're worried that Joe Biden's coming after you, well, there's one way to avoid worrying about that.
And that is, you can be a good Republican who works with Joe Biden.
So presumably, this means like Mitt Romney on infrastructure.
Presumably this means like Murkowski in Alaska who has voted with Joe Biden a few times.
But it means it means like Bill Kristol and the team over at the dispatch or the bulwark.
Those are the good Republicans.
The good Republicans are the ones who basically Liz Cheney, the people who do Joe Biden's.
And by the way, they're only good Republicans so long as they do his bidding.
The minute they don't, they move back into MAGA Republican territory.
It's a binary equation here.
You're either with him or you're against him.
George W. Bush said that about actual terrorists.
Joe Biden says that about domestic Americans who oppose his political agenda.
He's again, I'm going to read that to you again.
He says, I want to be very clear up front.
Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans are MAGA Republicans.
Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.
He doesn't actually characterize what the extreme ideology is.
It just means people who oppose him.
Quote, I know because I've been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
That's the litmus test.
If he works with you and if you work with him, then this means you are no longer, you don't have to worry about him labeling you the enemy.
But if you don't work with him, that is a very different story.
If you do not work with Joe Biden, well, then he is going to unleash the power of his administration against you.
And you should be ready because you are a threat to the Republic.
You, you, the person who doesn't like his agenda.
You, the person who says, hey, yeah, you know what?
I'll say that you won the election in 2020.
Sure.
But I think you're a horrible president.
You're doing a terrible job and you should never win another election again.
And you're a demagogue who is using the patina of unity in order to purge your political opponents from the public square.
You're the enemy.
That's what this speech was all about.
Him trying to buy that back a little bit by pretending that he's not speaking about all Republicans.
You're right.
He's not speaking about all Republicans.
There are people at the Lincoln Project he's not speaking about.
There are some people who used to be Republicans and no longer consider themselves such.
The Ana Navarro's of the world.
He's not talking about you.
But if you are a conservative who opposes his agenda, he is talking about you.
He is talking about you.
So, let's go through the indicators of who he is talking about when he decides that because he's talking about you as a threat to the Republic.
Again, threats to the Republic get thrown in jail.
That's what happens in the United States.
If you're an actual threat to the system of the United States, That is effectively treason.
So he's accusing many, many people in the country of treason.
So he goes on.
These are hard things, but I'm an American president, not a president of red America, blue America, but of all America.
And I believe it's my duty, my duty to love with you, to tell the truth, no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.
And here, in my view, is what is true.
MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution.
They do not believe in the rule of law.
They do not recognize the will of the people.
They refuse to accept the results of a free election.
And they're working right now, as I speak in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies.
Empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
So a few things to note about this.
One, his own party has propped up some of these quote unquote election deniers in primaries so they can run against them.
Second, when he says Mag Republicans don't respect the Constitution, he declared last week that he could do something he had no constitutional power to do and simply relieve $500 billion in student loan debt.
Joe Biden despises the Constitution.
He sees it as a stricture preventing him from achieving the sort of power he craves.
When he says that Republicans don't believe in the rule of law, we've watched mass riots in 2020 promoted by the Democratic Party.
We have watched lawlessness break out in every major American city democratically governed.
We've seen people ransacking shops.
We've seen flash mobs wrecking places of business.
All in Democratic cities.
You're talking about rule of law from a man who has single-handedly declared over and over that he doesn't have the power to do a thing and then he just does it?
It's amazing, amazing stuff.
And when he says that they're working to undermine democracy itself, here's the thing.
If you were only talking about people who say, for example, in the states, yeah, you know what, if there's an election in my state and it goes the wrong way, I'm just going to throw out the result.
If you're just talking about that handful of people, if you're talking about that, That's an argument worth having.
He's not talking about those people.
This is a president of the United States who last year made a speech in which he said that if you were in favor of voter ID, you were akin to Bull Connor during Jim Crow.
He has suggested over and over that there is a mass effort by Republicans to prevent Americans from voting.
That voter suppression is a real issue in America.
And those people presumably are who he's talking about.
Now, voter suppression is not a major issue in America.
And when people say that voter fraud is a major issue in America, I think voter fraud is an issue in America because I can point to actual instances of voter fraud.
They are not nearly as copious as people think they are on the right.
I cannot point to a single example in the United States, and neither can you, of a person who wanted to vote and had their vote actively suppressed.
And if that did happen, that would be a federal civil rights violation.
But again, Joe Biden's goal here is to lump everybody in with the enemy.
Everybody he doesn't like is Hitler, he says, while standing in front of a set that could have been created by Lenny Reif and Stahl.
It's unbelievable.
OK, he continues.
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.
Yep, he said the quiet part out loud, guys.
Remember that part like two seconds ago when he said he's not talking about all Republicans?
He's not talking about all conservatives.
He's just talking about the real MAGA extremists.
Know you this.
If you are a person who believes in the right to life for unborn human beings, you are a MAGA extremist, determined to take America backwards.
If you believe there is no constitutional right to privacy, because literally there is no constitutional right to privacy, If you are Samuel Alito, if you are Clarence Thomas, if you are Justice Gorsuch, if you are Brett Kavanaugh, if you are Amy Coney Barrett, if you are, for that matter, John Roberts, who voted on this, you are a MAGA extremist.
If you believe there is no right to contraception, because there is no right to contraception in the Constitution of the United States, if you believe, in traditional marriage, that you do not have the unfettered right to marry anyone that you wish to have sex with, In the United States, which is a historically true statement, there is no right under the Constitution for you to marry anybody you love.
By the way, even Joe Biden doesn't believe that.
Joe Biden doesn't believe that brothers have a right to marry one another, for example.
I assume.
Maybe he'll change his opinion on that and float another trial balloon.
Bottom line here is this.
If you oppose his political agenda, you are a MAGA extremist.
So he started off with this group of Republicans who are not MAGA extremists.
And then he's shrinking it.
He's shrinking it.
And now, it turns out that if you just don't agree with him on his interpretation of American law, this makes you a MAGA extremist determined to take America backwards.
By the way, it is reminiscent of the language he used to use about Mitt Romney.
You remember that in 2012, he suggested that Mitt Romney wanted to take us back to the 1950s.
He wants to put y'all back in chains.
So yeah, I have doubts.
When Joe Biden says he doesn't mean all of you, He's using the exact same language about Mitt Romney in 2012 as he is using about you today as he is using about people who actually rioted on January 6th.
That is the goal.
He's saying it straight up.
You oppose his agenda.
You are the enemy.
And here I am at a taxpayer-funded event flanked by members of the American military with the Independence Hall lit in blood red in order to explain to you why I'm pro-democracy.
Then he has the gall to explain that it's his opponents who are promoting authoritarian leaders.
Again, says the man who has centralized more power in the executive branch than any president in American history.
Here we go.
They promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
Can you pause it for one second?
Okay, before we go further in this particular clip, I'm old enough to remember, because I'm more than two years old, when the Democratic Party promoted the lie that America's police were systemically racist, pooh-poohed massive, most damaging riots in American history in the summer of 2020, when the vice president, second in command to this guy, the heir apparent, tried to bail out rioters in Minneapolis in the middle of 2020.
Right now, we've had a spate of church burnings and bombings and pro-life clinics that have been attacked.
And this administration has done nothing about those things.
Dead silence about all of that.
We had a person who tried to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his home, was ready to do that.
And you're saying that the opposition are the people who are fanning the flames of political... By the way, what fans the flames of political violence more than literally labeling half the country from the podium of the President of the United States, enemies of the Republic?
People who wish to tear down the republic.
Traitors.
It's hard to think of anything that could raise the temperature more than that.
And that's exactly what he's doing.
I oppose political violence.
Also, all of my opponents are basically akin to domestic terrorists.
I mean, number one, you're driving a press for oppression on behalf of the actual state.
And number two, you're driving people who may be prone to violence to actually take up arms and commit acts of violence.
You're raising the temperature.
There's no question that's what he's doing here in the most cynical possible way.
Because then, if God forbid, there is violence, he's going to then attribute that to all of his political opposition.
It's a cynical and despicable play from a guy who's now proclaiming that he's there for unity.
My God.
Continue.
They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th, brutally attacking law enforcement.
Not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at us as patriots.
And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.
They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people.
This time, they're determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.
So again, I am not a person who has said that I think Joe Biden lost the 2020 election.
But the entire Democratic Party spent four years claiming that Donald Trump was the illegitimate president of the United States based on Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
The current White House press secretary has said twice that Republicans stole elections.
She has not been asked that one single time.
Green Jean-Pierre said that.
It's just an incredible thing.
It's an incredible thing.
And again, even if you agree with this part of the speech where you're right, there are people out there and they're denying the election.
They shouldn't deny the election.
He lumped together everyone who is pro-life in this country, people who are pro-Second Amendment in this country, people who believe in traditional marriage in this country with that.
They're all the same.
They're all enemies of the Republic.
They're dangers to equality and democracy.
They are threats to the soul of America.
We're just getting started.
It gets worse and worse.
Here we go.
That's why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Ludwig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a clear and present danger to our democracy.
But while the threat to American democracy is real, I want to say as clearly as we can, we are not powerless in the face of these threats.
We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy.
There are far more Americans, far more Americans, from every background of belief, who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.
You're not powerless.
You're not powerless, guys.
There are people who are attacking democracy.
What are you going to do about it?
They're attacking it.
Now, typically in America, when people attack our democracy, when people attack, again, that's criminal behavior.
He's encouraging half the population to see the other half of the population as actual criminals and traitors.
And the hypocrisy of the speech, the things that he says about his political opponent that apply mostly to him, they just come fast and furious here.
He then, in the most galling fashion, while labeling half of the American population traitors to the country, he then suggested he is here for unity.
It's enough to make you vomit.
It really is.
It's truly stomach-churning.
So, Joe Biden just continued along these lines.
Again, the idea is that everyone he opposes is bad.
Every single person.
And he says we are now at an inflection point.
We're at an inflection point.
And you have a binary choice.
You're either with him, or you're with them.
You're with us, or you're with the MAGA extremists.
Here's Joe Biden.
It's in our hands, yours and mine.
To stop the assault on American democracy.
I believe America is at an inflection point.
One of those moments that determine the shape of everything that's to come after.
And now, America must choose to move forward or to move backwards.
To build a future or obsess about the past.
To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism.
are a nation of fear, division, and of darkness.
Magga republicans have made their choice.
They embrace anger.
They thrive on chaos.
They live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies.
But together, together we can choose a different path.
We can choose a better path.
Forward to the future.
The future of possibility.
This stuff sounded better in the original German.
When he says things like, my opponents, they stoke fear, division, and darkness.
Flanked by members of the military and a blood-red background.
When he says, my political opponents, these are people who thrive on chaos.
They live in the shadow of lies.
Those are my political opponents.
But together, we can choose light and happiness.
We can choose something wonderful.
And then he's so nonspecific about the people he's talking about that it literally includes everyone who is pro-life.
Every single person who's pro-traditional marriage.
Every single person who opposes the transing of the children.
All those people are people who live in the shadow of lies.
And he can tell you that he's not thriving on fear and chaos.
This is a man who's against fear and living on fear and chaos and generating hatred for the opponent.
You should definitely fear and hate the chaos of his opponents.
I mean, it's the gaslighting of this speech.
Astonishing.
And then he talks about his own values.
He talks about the values of our nation.
And gag me with a spoon, man.
I mean, this is just all the stuff he says that his opponents believe.
The projection here is epic levels of projection.
This is a nation that honors our Constitution.
We do not reject it.
This is a nation that believes in the rule of law.
We do not repudiate it.
This is a nation that respects free and fair elections.
We honor the will of the people.
We do not deny it.
And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool.
We do not encourage violence.
We are still an America that believes in honesty and decency.
And respect for others.
Patriotism, liberty, justice for all, hope, possibilities.
We are still, at our core, a democracy.
By democracy, he means, you're a bunch of people who delegate all power to me through a pure mob rule election.
When he says this is a nation that honors our constitution, it's hard to think of a president who's honored our constitution less than this one.
He's been struck down by the Supreme Court on executive overage multiple times.
Then he's done it anyway.
He was told by the Supreme Court, you cannot use the CDC to cram down an eviction moratorium.
And he's like, you know what?
I'm doing it anyway.
I'm just going to do it anyway.
Because after all, we'll get a month of people not paying their rent out of it.
This person has zero care about the Constitution.
When he says, we believe in the rule of law, we do not repudiate it, I'm going to need to see some details on what exactly causes you to unleash the Attorney General of the United States and the DOJ on the possibility of prosecuting your political opponent.
And it better not be the same kind of stuff that Hillary Clinton got away with.
When he says we respect free and fair elections, you spent four years declaring that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin's puppet.
He says we honor the will of the people, we don't deny it.
Is that really the case?
Because it seems to me that every time you lose a political battle, you declare the entire game rigged.
And we reject violence as a political... We don't encourage violence.
You had mayors of your cities writing in giant block letters, Black Lives Matter and defund the police in the middle of a rioting summer.
Again, the projection is astonishing.
You're supposed to believe that these are the people who are pro-Constitution.
They're pro-rule of law.
They're pro-liberty.
They're pro-Republicanism.
These are the ones.
And I'm never going to get over the irony of him saying all this stuff while looking like he stepped straight out of the pages of a Mussolini speech.
It's amazing.
You could Photoshop this guy into a Mussolini background right here, and it would look almost the same.
But don't worry, guys.
He's, you know, he's against authoritarianism, is Joe Biden, the greatest centralizer of power in the executive branch in American history.
History tells us the blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.
For a long time, we've told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it's not.
We have to defend it, protect it.
Blind loyalty to a single leader is a problem.
I seem to remember a few political cults in the past.
And again, I have very little belief that Joe Biden believes that loyalty to a single figure is a particularly bad thing while standing using taxpayer dollars in front of Marines.
I mean, again, this is not the Marines fault.
It's the whole point.
He's hijacking the power of the presidency in order to use the prop of the military to back his message.
It's an extraordinary breach of what it means to be the President of the United States.
But don't worry.
He's going to call on all of us to come together.
We're going to come together around fighting the internal enemy.
We're going to come together around you ratting on your neighbors.
You never know.
It might be a member of your family.
It might be you.
You might have to report yourself.
Here we go.
That's why tonight I'm asking our nation to come together Unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.
We're all called by duty and conscience to confront extremists who put their own pursuit of power above all else.
Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than maggot Republicans are to destroying American democracy.
We, the people, We the people, the mob, we will not let anyone tear this country apart.
Go after your neighbor, go after him.
That's how we unite.
We unite by coming together as a mob and going after that guy who voted the other way in the last election cycle.
That guy, he probably hates democracy.
The best thing we can do, we got to shut that ass up.
Really important.
We gotta go after him.
We gotta ruin him.
We gotta use the power of the state to quash him.
That's how we achieve unity.
I said when Joe Biden took office and he gave his big unity address, there are only two ways to achieve unity in a disparate polity.
One, you accept that some people disagree with you and you move on.
Two, you purge.
I think it's pretty clear which direction Joe Biden prefers.
Okay, but he says, you know what?
I don't like political violence.
Political violence is really bad.
So here I am saying that my political opponents are extremists, which is the word that we used to use for terrorists.
They're domestic extremists who hate democracy and want to destroy the fundamentals of the Republic.
But guys, I hate violence.
I really do.
Violence is totally uncalled for against those people over there who just want to destroy the country, like fundamentally rip apart everything that it's about, hurt you, hurt your family.
Those people, they are the worst.
They're semi-fascists.
They're quasi-Nazis.
But I hate political violence, guys.
Political violence is so not appropriate.
Here's Joe Biden playing both sides.
We hear, you've heard it, more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool.
In this country.
It's not.
It can never be an acceptable tool.
So I want to say this plain and simple.
There is no place for political violence in America.
Period.
None.
Ever.
Oh, no place for it.
You know when that would have been a lot more useful?
Is when there were literally 21 million people marching in the streets and a significant number of people who then broke into stores, looted them, burned things down, and attacked police.
Okay, but here's the thing.
Joe Biden, when he says that his political opponents are the font head of all evil in the universe, when he says that, you have to understand, he really likes dissent.
He likes having these big, complicated conversations.
He likes the give and take of American politics, you traitorous bastards, you.
I believe in the give and take of politics and disagreement and debate and dissent.
We're a big, complicated country.
But democracy endures only if We, the people, respect the guardrails of the republic only if we, the people, accept the results of free and fair elections.
Only if we, the people, see politics not as total war but mediation of our differences.
Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election.
Either they win or they were cheated.
And that's where the maggot Republicans are today.
You spent four years and tens of millions of dollars on the theory that either Hillary Clinton won or you were cheated.
I'm sorry, Democrats have not accepted the results of a presidential election that went the other way for them since about 1988.
They thought the 2000 election was stolen.
They did not accept that George W. Bush was a legitimate president.
2004 was supposedly an outgrowth of 2000 and also die-bold voting machines.
In 2016, Donald Trump was a tool of the Russians and it was Facebook memes that got him elected.
Don't lecture us about accepting elections when you still say that Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia after she lost by 50,000 votes in her last gubernatorial race.
Yes, it's really bad when you have both sides rejecting the results of elections.
But let's stop pretending that this is a one-sided issue.
It is not.
It is bad when both sides do it.
Democrats seem to have a rule.
It's that it's really bad when you do it.
It's great when we do.
So he continues along these lines.
You can't love democracy only when you win.
This line is so astonishing coming from this leader of this party.
Here we go.
You can't love your country only when you win.
It's fundamental.
American democracy only works only if we choose to respect the rule of law and the institutions that were set up in this chamber behind me.
Only if we respect our legitimate political differences.
I will not stand by and watch.
I will not.
The will of the American people be overturned by wild conspiracy theories.
I will not stand by and watch elections in this country stolen by people who simply refuse to accept that they lost.
I will not stand by and watch the most fundamental freedom in this country, the freedom to vote and have your vote counted.
And be taken from you and the American people.
There are people, did you know, who are actively attempting to prevent you from voting?
Now, one of the things that's amazing here is that there has been a bipartisan possibility of a bill that's been brought up by Mitch McConnell in the Senate, and that is change the Electoral Count Act so that there is no possibility of rejecting certified votes from the states.
The Democrats won't pass it because they want to run on these issues.
They want to pretend that their opponents hate democracy and then run on that.
When he says, this line is so amazing coming from the Democrats, you can't love democracy only when you win.
You know what the polls show?
The polls show over and over and over again that Republicans remain patriotic.
They say they love the country even when Democrats win.
Democrats change their opinions on how much they love the country based almost solely on when they are winning and losing.
This has been a longtime feature of American politics.
This is true under every Pew, Gallup, and every other poll that's ever been taken.
When it comes to feelings of patriotism, Republicans are very consistent that they love the country.
Democrats only love the country when Barack Obama is president.
And then when Donald Trump wins, boom, the patriotism just drops off the table.
When he says that we have to work to respect the rule of law and the institutions that were set up in the chamber, he despises those institutions.
He has called for the end of the filibuster, for example.
He is somebody who says that the Supreme Court of the United States is not doing its job unless it just greenlights what he is doing.
He has done stuff he himself has declared illegal.
But he's an institutionalist, don't you know?
I mean, this is gaslighting at the very, very highest level.
Again, when he says that there are people in this country who are attempting to suppress the right to vote, that is such a lie.
What exactly is the evidence that he has that millions of votes are being not counted and thrown out?
It was Republican officials in Georgia who certified the election.
It was Republican officials in Arizona who certified the election.
It was Republican officials in Wisconsin and in Pennsylvania who certified the election.
It was Vice President Mike Pence who certified the election.
The Vice President to Donald Trump.
It was Mitch McConnell who certified the election.
But he labels all those people MAGA Republicans.
All of them.
Every single one of those people.
Because again, it's not about the thing he says it's about.
It's about the people who oppose him are the enemy of the country.
And you can tell this because then he links it to his current political program.
Because then, about three quarters of the way through the speech, it just turns into him listing off all of the amazing things that he has done.
Because if you oppose those amazing things that he has done, this means you're an enemy of the Republic.
So he talks about how he is the light that has emerged from the darkness.
He, in his grim, elderly visage, barely able to speak without either being jacked up to heights of adrenaline that make him nearly incomprehensible, or he falls asleep, like he's suffering from narcolepsy.
He is saying that he is the light that has emerged.
He is the messianic figure that has emerged from the darkness, he said, flanked.
I can't get over this.
Flanked by a blood red independence hall.
Throughout our history, America has often made the greatest progress coming out of some of our darkest moments, like you're hearing that bullhorn.
Okay, so here I think we should point out that about two-thirds of the way through the speech, there was a guy in a bullhorn who was audible on the audio and what he was screaming was F Joe Biden.
That's who he was screaming.
And Joe Biden says that the darkest moments of our history are the things coming out of that bullhorn.
People saying they don't like him.
That's the darkest moments of our history.
And you know what the progress is that came out of the darkest moments of our history?
That progress was him.
He is the progress.
He is the man on the donkey riding into Judea.
He is, you thought he was just a venal corrupt old politician who's lusted after power his entire life and now that he's gained it, is gripping it with the fiery force of a thousand suns.
You thought that's who he was.
But no, actually, he is a light bringer.
Like his predecessor, he's a light bringer.
So he compares himself to, once again, the MAGA Republicans.
And amazing stuff here.
MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair.
They spread fear and lies.
Lies told for profit and power.
But I see a different America.
An America with an unlimited future.
An America that's about to take off.
I mean, that's an amazing statement.
So his opponents see carnage, darkness and despair.
This entire speech has been about how half the American population wishes to destroy the democracy in which we live.
But don't worry.
It's his opponents who see carnage and darkness and despair.
He's hopeful.
You see, he's an optimist.
What makes him optimistic?
What makes him optimistic is that he has spent more money than any president in the history of the world.
What makes him optimistic is that he has rammed through useless package after useless package, bringing us to 40-year highs in inflation and the brink of a very serious recession in the United States.
What makes him optimistic is things like pulling out of Afghanistan and subjecting 38 million people to the predations of the Taliban.
I mean, all these things make him optimistic.
It turns out that optimism is wrapped up.
If you're optimistic about the country, it's because you love Joe Biden.
It's just that simple.
Here we go.
Just look around.
I believe we could lift America from the depths of COVID.
So we passed the largest economic recovery package since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I believe we could build a better America.
So we passed the biggest infrastructure investment since President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
And I believe we could create a clean energy future and save the planet.
So we passed the most important climate initiative ever, ever, ever.
Right, so the light is his policy.
It turns out the cure is not saying that people win elections.
That's not the cure.
The cure is not even rejecting Donald Trump.
The cure, according to Joe Biden, is embrace all of the things I want.
And if you don't embrace all of the things that I want, this means you are standing with the white supremacists and the extremists.
He makes this absolutely explicit in the next minute of the speech.
No matter what the white supremacists and the extremists say, I made a bet on you, the American people, and that bet is paying off.
Proving that from darkness, the darkness of Charlottesville, of COVID, of gun violence, of insurrection, we can see the light.
Light is now visible.
Light that will guide us forward.
Not only in words, but in actions.
Actions for you, for your children, for your grandchildren, for America.
Even in this moment.
Stop it right there.
When he says, well, I mean, again, the juxtaposition is a binary, Manichaean juxtaposition.
There are the white supremacists, the MAGA extremists, and I made a bet that they were going to lose.
And the proof that they're losing is that I, the Lightbringer, have done all of these things.
All of my policies are the solution.
If you don't back my policies, obviously, you're with Charlottesville.
Obviously, you love gun violence.
Obviously, you're a person who loves COVID.
You're a COVID lover.
Because he is the person who has brought us all together for our children, for our grandchildren, for America.
And if you don't believe that, then you're the enemy.
You.
You are.
Don't you feel the light?
Don't you feel the happiness and the optimism?
Don't you?
The political lack of acumen here is astonishing.
The moral blindness here is even more astonishing.
And again, that combined with the worst optics I've ever seen from a major American figure leads me to say this is the worst speech I've ever seen in my entire life.
And of course, he doesn't stop there.
He just continues beating this dead horse into the ground.
He takes a jackhammer, just starts jackhammering that corpse into the ground.
Here we go.
That's where we need to focus our energy.
Not in the past.
Not on divisive culture wars.
Not on the politics of grievance.
But on a future we can build together.
The Maggie Republicans believe that for them to succeed, everyone else has to fail.
They believe America is not like I believe about America.
I believe America is big enough for all of us to succeed.
And that is the nation we're building, a nation where no one is left behind.
I feel the like, do you?
Do you feel it?
We focus not on the past, not on grievances, not on divisive culture wars, but on that son of a bitch right there.
That guy, if we pummel that guy together, we're going to feel the unity.
We're going to build a nation where no one is left behind except for that jackass.
Man, you see the guy in the MAGA hat over there?
We are just gonna clock the sh** out of him.
And that will bring us together like never, ever, ever before.
Do you feel the light?
Do you feel the warmth?
Do you feel the heavenly voice shine upon you?
Do you feel it?
So Joe Biden, once again, the idea, of course, is that the way that he's going to build a country big enough for all of us is by excising a significant percentage of us.
And this he calls the battle for the soul of the nation.
The battle for the soul ends with somebody losing.
The people who are going to lose are all the people who disagree with him.
Here we go.
I believe we're in a battle for the soul of this nation.
I still believe that to be true.
I believe the soul is the breath, the life, and the essence of who we are.
The soul is what makes us, us.
The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God.
That all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect.
That all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence.
And that democracy, democracy must be defended.
For democracy makes all these things possible.
This seems like a dude who loves democracy, right?
He loves it.
He just loves popular rule and he loves checks and balances.
He likes individual rights protected by a limited government.
Those are the things he probably, probably likes.
And here is the thing.
The way to protect democracy is to vote for him.
Obviously.
Obviously, not to vote for his opponents, not to engage in the rough back and forth politics.
That stuff, that's secondary.
What he needs is power.
See, if you give him more power, he'll preserve the democracy.
That's the best way to preserve a democracy is to hand power to one person and centralize authority in him.
That's how you preserve democracy in a time of crisis, says Joe Biden.
Vote, vote, vote.
And if we do our duty, if we do our duty in 2022 and beyond, Then ages still to come will say we, all of us here, we kept the faith.
We preserved democracy.
We heeded our worst, we heeded not our worst instincts, but our better angels.
And he concluded by suggesting once again, we're united guys.
We're the United States of America.
Except for that guy.
That guy, whoo!
Better do something about him.
But we are the United... My favorite is when he just starts quoting Barack Obama, but it's just feeble and tired and old and a worse version of demagoguery, like significantly worse.
At least Barack Obama, when he was demagoguing it, he had the brains not to do it in front of Mussolini's set.
But here's Joe Biden.
We are the United States of America.
The United States of America.
And may God protect our nation and may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy.
God bless you all.
Democracy.
Thank you.
Democracy.
Thank you.
I love democracy.
So how did the media celebrate this speech?
Well, the way that you would think.
They immediately began performing a prostate massage on the president of the United States.
So here are members of the media just going gaga over all of this.
They loved it.
They loved it because of course they are apparatchiks of the state apparatus.
So here we go.
This is a speech Joe Biden's wanted to give for a very long time.
I really thought this was a fascinating bit of presidential stagecraft and rhetoric.
It was a very, very patriotic speech.
I appreciate his hope and his sense of patriotism.
And I couldn't agree more with what he said.
He talked about A kind of coalition of those of goodwill coming together to unite to defend democracy.
He almost seemed to sort of be reclaiming patriotism.
He literally framed this as a battle between light and darkness.
And he called on Americans to come together despite their political differences.
Where he says to the heckler, that dude, that man, that person from the other side is entitled to be outraged.
Totally.
Republicans right now would have that heckler be beaten.
Yes, our media say they say, you know, it's all about coming together.
That's what it was.
It was all about patriotism.
Joe Biden said that he was going to come into power and he was going to restore normalcy.
He was going to bring down the temperature.
He was going to restore unity in the country.
And then he gave that speech.
If you trust this man with power, if you trust this man again with power and his party with power, I don't know what you are thinking.
I, honest to God, do not know what you are thinking.
It is a dark time in American history.
That dark time is not going to be alleviated by a president of the United States with actual authoritarian ambitions, speaking falsely on behalf of democracy and equality, while ripping half the country as actual moral enemies.
Alrighty, folks, we've reached the end of the show, but we'll be back here Tuesday with much, much more.
Enjoy Labor Day weekend.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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