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March 8, 2024

Biden’s SOTU address was, quite simply, horrible

By Andrea Widburg

Joe Biden’s State of the Union (“SOTU”) was unlike anything I’ve seen before, and I started watching these speeches in the mid-1980s. No president has ever been so maniacally wired, periodically incoherent, or viciously angry. That was style. The substance was worse. Biden opened by calling Trump a Nazi, shifted to Ukraine, promised to stamp out “insurrections,” and attacked Republicans—and then ended by calling for non-partisanship and comity. Throughout it all, he lied and then lied some more. This was a Dark Brandon campaign speech, not an SOTU.

If you didn’t watch Biden’s SOTU, count yourself lucky. It was a deeply disturbing experience. The best comment about Biden’s demeanor came from Greg Gutfeld, who skipped over the usual take that Biden was completely hopped up on a variety of prescription amphetamines:

When it came to the frenzied speed behind the speech, Ari Fleischer had the second-best description:

Joe Biden was an angry Grandpa Simpson, with the volume cranked up and the speed out of control. This was the kind of guy who, in a rage, would readily push the red button. That alone was unnerving, demonstrating that we have a maniac in office—and, worse, his rage is against the American people.

Biden didn’t open by speaking to Americans about our wonderful country. He began by saying that America is facing a dystopian moment because Donald Trump is effectively Hitler, a point he returned to in an ad-lib during the speech. (All quotations are from the official White House transcript.)

In January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation.

He said, “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.”

Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe.

President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment.  

Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.

Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation.

Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.

And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.

Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.

After telling Americans we’re all about to come under the thumb of the new Third Reich, Biden didn’t even return to America. Instead, he spent several minutes telling Americans we must fund the war in Ukraine. Yup. America’s under threat from Putin’s war in Eastern Ukraine. Show Joe the money.

Next in the Democrat dog-and-pony show was January 6, the darkest day in American history.

January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

Most Republicans and a large share of Democrats and Independents believe that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud. That truly poses a grave threat to democracy (the voice of the people). Biden actually fears that reversing that fraud is the gravest threat to the Democrat party since the Civil War. No wonder Biden implicitly warned Americans, again, that if they push back against fraud, they will get a visit from the FBI.

Having threatened Americans, Biden did a weird fistshake at the Supreme Court. Naturally, he complained about the Dobbs decision destroying a constitutional right when, in fact, the decision said no federal right ever existed, with abortion being a state’s right matter. But it was what followed that was so disturbing in tone, content, and incoherence:

Is any of this normal?

Nor is it normal for the president during a SOTU, which is supposed to tell Congress and the American people how we’re doing in terms of the economy, national security, and other national metrics, to keep attacking his election opponent. Biden didn’t stop at calling Trump the new Hitler. Instead, according to the official script, he referred negatively to Trump 13 times. (He ad-libbed multiple other insults):

Then there were the flat-out lies. One of the most obvious was Biden’s claim that he, personally, brought the cost of insulin down from $400 per month to $35 for seniors:

Instead of paying $400 a month for insulin seniors with diabetes only have to pay $35 a month!

And now I want to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it!

For years people have talked about it but I finally got it done and gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs just like the VA does for our veterans.

The truth is that Trump had already lowered insulin prices via executive order. On his first full day in office, Biden reversed that order, causing prices to shoot up. Then, he signed his own order, for which he now takes credit:

It’s a Herculean task to go through Biden’s SOTU and find every lie, whether by commission or omission, about national security, the economy, education, or anything else—and that’s the point. As Alex Jones told Tucker following the SOTU, it’s easy to rebut one lie. It’s almost impossible to rebut a hundred.

He's right. As a litigator, I saw that it takes a sentence to tell a lie but a paragraph or more to rebut it. Most people (judges included) have no patience for the rebuttal, especially when there are a hundred rebuttals. The “Big Lie” is equally effective when presented as 100 smaller lies.

Throughout it all, the Democrats in the audience responded with partisan fervor, screaming, “Four more years,” not just when Biden entered the chamber but throughout his speech.

I think that because they were in the House chamber for an official proceeding (it’s in the Constitution!), this was a clear Hatch Act violation, as well as violating House ethics rules.

Jamie Raskin gleefully tagged Marjorie Taylor Greene for wearing a hat that wanted to Make America Great Again, which is a sentiment every American politician should endorse:

Greene, incidentally, scored the best moment of the SOTU when she demanded that Biden say Laken Riley’s name. Biden processed the request and decided on the fly that he’d better comply. Therefore, he acknowledged that “Lincoln Riley” was killed by an “illegal” (infuriating his base) before saying actual Americans are more dangerous and, by the way, did you know that his son died, too:

Biden also demanded (again) that Republicans vote for the border bill, insisting that it will stem the flow of illegal aliens by giving him the power he needs. Another fact: Biden already has plenary power to stop all illegal immigration instantly. What the bill will do is weaken America’s existing immigration laws to paper over the crisis Biden created by violating those same laws.

The only unexpected part of a speech that had included predictable demands for gun control, crocodile tears about book banning, an effort to lessen election integrity, and a huge, boats-on-the-water relief effort for the same people in Gaza who enable Hamas, was Biden’s bizarre claim that Democrats are the pro-police party. Marinate on that one for a while.

After this unnerving display of anger, hysteria, vengefulness, hate, and dishonesty, Biden closed his speech this way: “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. … There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together!”

A coked-up demagogue is not what America needs, but it’s all that the Democrat party has to offer.

Image: YouTube screen grab (cropped).

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