Biden blasts ‘extreme’ GOP in Labor Day swing-state trips
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden excoriated “MAGA Republicans” and the extreme right on Monday, pitching personal Labor Day appeals to swing-state union members who he hopes will turn out in force for his party in November.
“The middle class built America,” Biden told a workers’ gathering at park grounds in Milwaukee. “Everybody knows that. But unions built the middle class.”
Later Monday, he flew to West Mifflin, outside Pittsburgh — returning to Pennsylvania for the third time in less than a week and just two days after his predecessor, Donald Trump, staged his own rally in the state.
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Trump has endorsed candidates in key races around the country and Biden is warning that some Republicans now believe so strongly in Trumpism that they are willing to undermine core American values to promote it. The president said Thursday that “blind loyalty to a single leader, and a willingness to engage in political violence, is fatal to democracy.”
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During his address in Milwaukee, Biden said “Not every Republican is a MAGA Republican” but singled out those who have taken Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign cry to dangerous or hateful lengths. He highlighted episodes like last year’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He said that many in the GOP are “full of anger, violence, hate, division.”
...The crowd jeered loudly as the president repeatedly chided Republican Sen. Ron Johnson [in other words, jeered the president loudly for criticizing Johnson] of Wisconsin for voting against a Democratic-backed measure meant to lower prescription drug prices. The president also suggested Johnson and other congressional Republicans were willing to undermine Social Security.
[Okay, I watched the relevant portions of the speech. I didn't hear "the crowd" "jeer loudly" at the president, I heard one guy, who you could barely hear, who, when security attempted to escort him out, the president said, "No, no, no, no, no. Let him go. Everybody has the right to be an idiot."]
