The White House on Tuesday tried to clarify and walk back President Joe Biden’s repeated condemnation of Republicans who supported former President Donald Trump.
“He’s been very clear when he’s talked about MAGA Republicans, Ultra MAGA Republicans. He’s talked about the leadership in the Republican Party,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during the daily briefing on Tuesday.
New York Times reporter Michael Shear asked Jean-Pierre to clarify a message on the president’s social media account saying that not every congressional Republican was a “MAGA Republican.”
I want to be clear: Not every Congressional Republican is a MAGA Republican. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But an extreme set of MAGA Republicans in Congress have chosen to take us backwards.
Together, we can choose a different path.
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 6, 2022
Jean-Pierre tried to argue that the president was only talking about some of the leaders of the Republican Party.
“You have leaders in the Republican Party who are offering extreme, extreme agenda. And so that’s what he means,” she said.
Jean-Pierre contradicted statements from last week, in which she insisted that not just the leaders of the Republican Party but also supporters of Trump were a threat to democracy.
“Let me be very clear, it’s not just Republican leadership, it’s not just that blanket right?” she said to reporters at the daily briefing on Wednesday. “He’s talking about an extreme portion, an extreme part of the party.”
Jean-Pierre insisted that supporters of Trump were in a “bucket” of people who posed a threat to democracy.
“When you are supporting an authoritarian figure, as we have seen, who is leading, currently leading, the former president, you know, and um saying and inciting the violence that you are or wanting to take our freedoms, you know we need to say something,” she said.
During Biden’s speech on Thursday condemning all supporters of Trump, he warned his supporters to stand up and act to thwart the “MAGA Republicans.”
“There is 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,” he said.
After he was criticized for the overly partisan speech, Biden tried to walk his statement back the following day.
“I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country,” he said at the White House on Friday.
But during his Labor Day remarks in Wisconsin and in Pennsylvania, Biden continued to condemn the “MAGA Republicans.”
“It’s clear which way the new MAGA Republicans are. They’re extreme,” he said in Pennsylvania. “And democracy is really at stake.”
On Monday, the president even described a heckler who tried to interrupt his speech as an “idiot” that posed a threat to Democracy.
“We have to be stronger and more determined and more committed to saving American democracy than the MAGA Republicans and that guy out that door, are destroying democracy,” he said, referring to the heckler.
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