OPINION:
On Jan. 20, 2021, President Biden, in his Inauguration Day address, pledged his “whole soul is this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.”
In the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday, our nation has never been less cohesive or more divided and bitter. Much of that fracture is solely because of Mr. Biden and his unrelenting attacks on Mr. Trump and his MAGA supporters — a whopping 74 million Americans to judge by the 2020 election returns.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Mr. Biden said in a fiery Independence Hall speech on Sept. 1, 2022, looking to shape the midterm elections. “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.”
He continued: “MAGA 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. And yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.”
In his State of the Union address this year, Mr. Biden referred back to the divisions of the Civil War, calling Mr. Trump and his Supreme Court picks threats to democracy somehow on a par with the Confederacy.
“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today,” he lamented. “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.”
Republicans, he said, had become a party of “resentment, revenge and retribution,” mentioning “his predecessor” and the evils he will supposedly inflict on the country a record-breaking 13 times.
But on Sunday, Mr. Biden was singing another tune, calling on all Americans to “lower the temperature” in our politics and to remember, “while we may disagree, we are not enemies.” He condemned previous acts of violence, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and the attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But it cannot be forgotten how Mr. Biden politicized these two acts of violence to his own benefit. After Mr. Pelosi was attacked, Mr. Biden addressed the nation, tying the assault to the events and passions of Jan. 6.
Mr. Pelosi’s attacker “entered the home asking, ‘Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?’” Mr. Biden said. “Those were the very same words used by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, when they broke windows, kicked in the doors, [and] brutally attacked law enforcement.”
In his Oval Office address on Sunday, Mr. Biden somehow neglected to mention the assassination attempt on then-New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin at a campaign event, the 2017 shooting by a Bernie Sanders supporter at a GOP congressional baseball practice that critically wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, or the foiled attack on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The president tried to frame the debate as one in which “both sides” are equally guilty.
To be sure, Mr. Biden didn’t directly cause a lunatic (whose motives remain obscure) to open fire on Mr. Trump at that Pennsylvania campaign rally Saturday afternoon, but his continued demonization of his Republican rival and his supporters is hard to square with any pledge to unify the country.
Mr. Biden’s Justice Department has openly targeted conservatives, from pro-life demonstrators and parents attending school board meetings to Catholics worshipping in church. His FBI has made “far-right extremists” the bureau’s top domestic concern. It has zealously prosecuted anyone within the perimeter of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 while ignoring pro-Hamas demonstrators assaulting law enforcement and defacing public statues on college campuses and city squares.
In 2022, The New York Times reported that Mr. Biden “confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted” and that he wanted his attorney general to “act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.”
Mr. Biden gleefully reminds Americans, at every moment possible, that Mr. Trump is now a “convicted felon” who “snapped” after the 2020 election. He fails to mention his No. 3 man at the Justice Department, Matthew Colangelo, left his powerful post to join Alvin Bragg’s bogus New York state prosecution of Mr. Trump — or that the judge in the case that found Mr. Trump guilty was a Biden donor.
It was Mr. Biden who was critical of the Supreme Court after the justices decided a president was immune from being prosecuted for official acts, declaring the justices have attacked a “wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a women’s right to choose.”
He called the immunity decision “a terrible disservice to the people of his nation,” expressing his disappointment that both special prosecutor Jack Smith’s case against Mr. Trump over the events of Jan. 6 and Mr. Trump’s sentencing in his New York business fraud conviction could be delayed until after November’s election.
The political left, led by Mr. Biden, has tried to slander, bankrupt, impeach, convict and jail Mr. Trump. Through God’s divine intervention, Mr. Trump continues to stand tall and fight on behalf of the American people after the assassination attempt failed.
Yes, Mr. Biden is correct; the rhetoric needs to be cooled in this country. For that to happen, however, the Democratic Party has a lot of introspection to do and apologies to make.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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