Fox Anchors Bret Baier and Dana Perino Call Biden’s Speech Condemning Capitol Riot ‘Political’ and ‘Divisive’

Moments after President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Capitol rotunda on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, Fox News anchor Dana Perino criticized the speech as “political” and “divisive.”

“The president spoke for a bit over 20 minutes that followed the vice president’s remarks in which she called for the passage of the voting rights bill that hangs in the Senate,” she said. “The president, though, his remarks were more pointed and quite political I would say, divisive in many ways.”

“This is how he sees it,” she added. “Everyone has a choice how they want to communicate, especially the president of the United States.”

Bret Baier was a bit more nuanced but stronger in his reaction as he mostly agreed with Perino on the tenor of the speech, suggesting that they aren’t hitting it hard enough. “It was as forceful, aggressive, pointed, specifically at the former president as we’ve seen in a speech from President Biden since taking office January 20th of last year,” he said.

Baier called the speech “hugely political,” and Perino later said that Biden, in explicitly condemning the violent riot, opted for rhetoric that “escalated” politically, as opposed to de-escalating.

Perhaps the toughest part of Biden’s speech directed towards Trump was:

What did we not see? We didn’t see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation’s capitol under siege. This wasn’t a group of tourists, this was an armed insurrection. They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people, they were looking to deny the will of the people.

They were looking to uphold they weren’t looking to uphold a free and fair election, they were look to go overturn one. They weren’t looking to save the cause of America, they were looking to subvert the Constitution. This isn’t about being bogged down in the past, this is about making sure the past isn’t buried. That’s the only way forward. That’s what great nations do. They don’t bury the truth, they face up to it. It sounds like hyperbole, but that’s the truth. They face up to it.

Perino and Baier were correct in their assessment that Biden went after Trump in his speech and it was indeed political in that way. Perhaps overlooked in their assessment, however, is that Biden’s framing of his criticism was a call for universal and bipartisan belief in democracy, vis a vis accepting election results and not violently ransacking the Capitol building.

A more charitable view of the speech was that it divided Americans between those who believe in elections and those who think that attacking the Capitol and violently beating police is good solution if your candidate loses an election.

Watch above via Fox News.