President Joe Biden delivered a powerful speech Monday at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The state is simultaneously friendly and hostile territory, as Black southerners remain his most loyal supporters, and white southerners overwhelmingly back the New York-born fascist.
South Carolina Republicans, of course, took great offense at Biden’s visit, because they can’t let Black people enjoy anything that’s just for us. Donald Trump boot licker Nancy Mace released a video on the generic social media site in which she mocked Biden for failing to “restore the soul of the nation” and promote harmony with the same people who tried to overturn his election victory.
“Today, Joe Biden will visit Charleston and try to use the pulpit of a church to further divide our nation and distract from his failures on the economy, the border and foreign policy.”
Mace, whose district in Charleston was ruled an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, is a singularly graceless liar, which not-so coincidentally was a major theme of Biden’s speech.
“Once again, there are some in this country trying to turn a loss into a lie — a lie which, if allowed to live, will once again bring terrible damage to this country,” Biden told the 700 parishioners and other guests gathered at the church. “This time, the lie is about the 2020 election.”
Biden repeatedly called Trump a “loser,” which he is, but it’s also an effective line of attack because it highlights how small Trump is. He’s a wannabe despot, sure, but at his core, he’s an emotionally empty coward who couldn’t accept so public a defeat (one that not even the Electoral College could erase), so he torched the very foundations of our democracy.
The president also had some fiery words for Gone With The Wind fan-fic writer and less successful presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who keeps sticking her zip-a-dee in her doo-dah whenever she discusses the Civil War.
“Let me be clear for those who don’t seem to know — slavery was the cause of the Civil War,” Biden said. “There’s no negotiation about that.”
Regrettably, I must report that some morons showed up to heckle Biden during his speech. They chanted “cease fire now!” as if this were in any way an appropriate venue for their protest. This ain’t open mic night. You interrupt a speaker at Black church and you’re gonna get hit upside the head by an old lady’s crown. Biden was more patient with the attention seekers than they deserved, and of course Fox News relished the spectacle. The hecklers were eventually drowned out by chants of “four more years!” — like this was a damn sports arena and not a place of worship where nine people were murdered. When a relative of Susie Jackson, one of the slain, rightly spoke out against the church protest, online dunces called her “pro-genocide.” These are not people who are actually concerned about Gaza or anyone but themselves. (I’m sure the geniuses online who defend this ghoulish behavior will insist that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. frequently crashed church services.)
Biden somberly recalled how the 2015 slaughter took place just a few feet from where he stood. Gunfire might’ve taken those nine people’s lives, but the gunman himself was filled with a deadly poison.
“What is that poison?” Biden asked. “White supremacy. Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America — not today, tomorrow or ever.”
From The New York Times:
He added that hope sprang from tragedy, noting that the shooting in 2015 led South Carolina to lower the Confederate battle flag that had flown on the grounds of the State House, though he did not mention that it was Ms. Haley as governor who led the drive for a law to do so.
Led the drive? GTFOH. More like she was dragged kicking and screaming after years of appeasing Confederate apologists. The NAACP had staged a longtime boycott over the traitor flag that cost the state at least $10 million in lost tourism. This is going to be one of those New York Times articles, isn’t it?
Peter Baker at the Times suggested Biden was simply trying to “rally disaffected Black supporters” and someone on CNN claimed he was reaching out to Black voters “at the last minute.” Yes, Biden’s speech was political, but not cynically so. He’s speaking directly to Black Americans about the existential threat from crazy-ass Republicans, and voting is how we keep our front-of-the bus privileges.
Baker cites the Times’ own polling that showed 22 percent of Black voters in six battleground states had lost their damn minds and planned to vote for Trump. That’s a major surge from Trump’s six percent nationally in 2016 and eight percent in 2020. However, please don’t shrug off that bleak statistic as impossible unless you’ve actually spoken to a Black person in the past year … who’s not me.
We can debate the number but even if it were rightly two percent, South Carolina’s junior US senator Tim Scott would be among them. Biden’s visit shocked his conscience, which people insist he possesses.
“President Biden’s visit to Charleston to stoke fears as his numbers are dropping amongst all minority groups is remarkable,” said Mr. Scott, who dropped out of the Republican presidential contest when his own campaign failed to gain traction. “But it’s also indicative of the fact that people of color, Americans all across this nation, are losing confidence in this president.”
Scott himself resorted to actual scare tactics during his failed presidential campaign, which he launched at Ft. Sumter where he insultingly compared Biden and Kamala Harris, the first Black vice president, to the Confederacy. He also supports Donald Trump, who offers nothing but division and hatred, demonizing his political opponents and smearing private citizens. (The judge in one of his several criminal trials had to issue a gag order.) This weekend, he mocked dead war hero John McCain’s physical disability. (Still, again.) It’s not as if Biden is making this personal while Trump soberly presents his proposals to reduce inflation. No one’s dumb enough to believe that … well, except for The New York Times.
You can and should watch Biden’s speech below.
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Loved the moment when, after the protestors were quieted, Biden acknowledges what he calls their “passion,” then says he is working hard behind the scenes to get Israel to let up on Gaza.
Someone in the audience calls out,
“You’re a good man!”
It was such a precious reminder that, whatever he’s done/not done during his presidency, Biden *is* a good man, and a man who does really care about people, who wants to help people and see them thrive.
"if a president has to look over his shoulder all the time before he makes a decision, afraid of being prosecuted later it degrades his authority" - paraphrased statement by trumps lawyer on immunity.
Ummm.. YEAH. That's considered a 'good thing' in a Democracy.