Charles Blow Defends Biden Attack on GOP Voters: ‘Obama Told the Truth When He Talked About People Clinging to Their Guns and Their Bibles’
New York Times columnist Charles Blow said Democrats might take heat for criticizing Republican voters, but concluded they are simply being honest.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden addressed the country in a speech wherein he branded former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as a threat to democracy.
Biden clarified in the speech he was not talking about all Republican voters.
Addressing Fox News reporter Peter Doocy on Friday, Biden said, “Come on! Look, guys. You keep trying to make that case. I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat to the country.”
On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, David Corn of Mother Jones said Biden was being “charitable” by stating not all Republicans are in the Trump wing of the party.
“I know that Biden wants to try to make it seem that the MAGA Republicans are an aberration,” he said, before adding extremism “has always been a strong part of the Republican Party.”
Host Joy Reid turned to Blow for comment, and said she considers the GOP to be the modern-day Dixiecrats.
She asked him, “Is it a faction or is it the party?”
Blow responded:
It’s very hard to split that hair and I think what Biden is doing, you know, is being a politician when he tries to do that… Republicans still have a favorable view of Donald Trump and they want him to run again in 2024.
About a third of people think there was something corrupt about the election, Republicans think that, about a quarter of them are Q-Anon believers. I don’t know how you do this. I don’t think it’s actually genuine to say it. I think it’s politically expedient and what he has to say.
Blow added Democrats “get beat over the head” when they “tell the truth.”
“Telling the truth becomes a political sin,” he said. “Barack Obama told the truth when he talked about people clinging to their guns and their bibles. Hillary Clinton told the truth she said that there were deplorable people in the Republican Party supporting Donald Trump and he was exercising a lot of racism and sexism and bigotry.”
While campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2008, Obama said some conservatives in declining communities “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” in comments that attracted considerable outrage.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
