“Standing up for democracy has only recently become a contrast issue and it’s a very sad commentary that it can be seen that way,” said one senior administration official. They found the substantive criticisms unpersuasive, too. They have grown to take delight in watching Republican congressional candidates face questions about Trump’s legal and political imbroglios.īut Biden’s team also rolled its eyes at the media coverage of his address, which fixated on the dramatic red backdrop and the pair of U.S. The former president has become so toxic, White House aides believe, that any day in which he dominates the discourse is a good day. They don’t deny that there was a political benefit to the speech. Multiple aides and allies said it would have been “a dereliction of duty” had Biden not spoken up as major developments threatened the bedrock of the country. He’s not going to gain votes from people like me,” he added.īut the belief inside the White House is that the address was simply unavoidable. I think he would have been better off not doing it. The speech felt like a “24-minute bitch slap of Republicans,” he said. Jim Dornan, a longtime Republican operative and member of the anti-Trump wing of the party, said while the former president and his allies are giving Biden plenty of evidence to back the arguments made Thursday night, Biden used the wrong tactic. His critics accused him of stoking the very divisions he was decrying. Within a relatively brisk 25 minutes, he declared that “equality and democracy are under assault,” that it did the country “no favor to pretend otherwise,” and that “too much of what is happening in our country today is not normal.” His defenders lauded him for speaking blunt truths.

Oncework source