Hey Joe, Where You Runn’n With That Bullshit in Your Mouth?

A Radical Response Joe Biden’s Big “Democracy” Speech in Arizona Last Week

A radical response by yours truly. I respond via interjection and in in italics below.

Listen to Biden’s address here. Read a transcript here.

Musical reference here.

Tempe Center for the Arts, Tempe, Arizona, September 28, 2023

+1. Joe Biden: Thank you, thank you. Please — please, sit down. Thank you, John McCain and I used to travel together. When John got back from all the time in Vietnam in prison — when he was released, he decided he wanted to go back to stay in the military. And he was assigned to the United States Senate and to the military office there that travels with senators when they travel abroad.

And John and I put in a couple hundred thousand miles together. And on our way to — I think I was going to either China — I forget what the destination was — China, I think. And we stopped in — we stopped in Hawaii. And the — the Chief Naval — of Operations was there showing me around. They did an event for me.

And [looking at John McCain’s children] John kept looking at your mom. Oh, I’m serious. (Laughter.) And he said, “My God, she’s beautiful.” (Laughter.) I said — and I said, “Yeah, she is, John.” And I said, “Well, you ought to go up and say hi to her.” He said, “No, no, no, no, no, no.” (Laughter.) “I’m not going to do that.”

Well, as your mom come — I won’t go into more detail, but I’ll tell you: I insisted that they meet. (Laughter.) And I take credit. I take credit for you guys. (Laughter and applause.)….

..I often think about our friendship of 40 years. The hammer-and-tong debates we’d have in the Senate. We’d argue — we were like two brothers. We’d argue like hell. (Laughs.) I mean really go at one another. Then we’d go lunch together. (Laughter.) No, not a joke. Or John would ride home with me. I mean, we — we traveled the world together.

And, by the way, when he found this magnificent woman and got married, I’m the guy that convinced him to run in Arizona as a Republican. Bless me, Father, for — (makes the sign of the cross). (Laughter and applause.) No, but it’s — you’ve got to admit, Cindy, I did. I talked to him, and I said, “John, you can do this job. My only worry is you’ll do it too well.” (Laughter.)

But, look, running on opposite sides of the nation’s highest office when — when he was running for president and I was on the vice presidential ticket — we still remained friends.

The conversations we had — he had with my son, Beau — the attorney general of the state of Delaware, a decorated major in the U.S. Army, was a guy who spent a year in Iraq — about serving in a war overseas, about the courage in battle against the same cancer that took John and my son.

Two weeks ago, I thought about John as I was standing in another part of the world — in Vietnam. I don’t want to be — I — excuse me if I — it was an emotional trip.

I was there to usher in a 50-year arc of progress for the two countries, pushed by John and, I might add, another John — this is the former Secretary of State, John from Massachusetts, won the Silver Star as well.

Street: Hey Joe, you and your good friend the late John McCain were a pair of imperialist warmongers who both backed George W. Bush’s monumentally criminal, mass murderous, and petro-imperialist invasion of Iraq. That so-called Vietnam War – really the US crucifixion of Southeast Asia – you can’t stop praising McCain for participating in was a massive criminal US-imperial assault that killed three million Vietnamese people.  McCain was shot down while he was trying to bomb Vietnamese children. The invasion of Iraq that you authorized and that you are so proud of your oldest son Beau for having participated in was another mass-murderous, criminal, and brazenly imperialist US assault. It  killed a million or more Iraqis. Your “fifty-year arc of [US-Vietnam] progress” is absurd: you mean that Americans now buy cheap garments made in Vietnamese sweatshops decades after the US tried to literally bomb Vietnam back into “the Stone Age” to prevent it from becoming a shining model of anti-imperialist national independence and social revolution.

I don’t care if you got McCain hooked up with his future fellow imperialist of a wife, Joe. Sorry.

2. Biden: Five years ago, as John was dying from brain cancer, John wrote a farell- — a farewell letter to the nation that he said — that he served so well in both war and in peace. His words tracked back centuries to America’s founding and then toward a triumphant future. Here’s what John wrote, and I quote, “We are citizens of the world — the world’s greatest republic. A nation of ideals, not blood and soil. Americans never quit. They never hide from history. America makes history.”

And John was right. Every other per- — every other nation in the world has been founded on either a grouping by ethnicity, religion, background. We’re the most unique nation in the world. We’re founded on an idea — the only major nation in the world founded on an idea. An idea that we are all created equal, endowed by our Cr- — in the image of God, endowed by our Creator to be — to be able to be treated equally throughout our lives.

We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it. But there’s danger we’re walking too far away from it now, the way we talk in this deba- — in this country. Because a long line of patriots from — like John McCain kept it from ever becoming something other than what it is….We are the essential nation. We are the essential nation… America is still a place of possibilities, a beacon for the world, a promise realized — where the power forever resides with “We the People.”

That’s our soul. That’s who we truly are. That’s who we must always be.

And that’s why I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future. We just need to remember who we are.

We are the United States of America.

Street: Hey, Joe, where you running with all that ridiculous American Exceptionalist bullshit in your mouth? The USA is the leading imperialist aggressor state on the planet. Our “world citizen[ship]” has involved massive and horrific slaughter and bloodshed, leading to millions and millions of deaths abroad in places like the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iraq, and Libya.  The United States was a genocidal white “settler” empire from day one, a ruthlessly expanding nation based on racist ethnic cleansing, chattel slavery, and patriarchy enforced by mass violence. 

What you call “the essential nation” is rightly viewed as a lethal menace to humanity in much of planet, for some very good reasons. Please see my 2018 essay “The World Will Not Mourn the Decline of the US Hegemony.”

There is nothing whatsoever in the US Declaration of Independence about people being “treated equally through their lives.” Nothing, Joe.  The document only says,“created equal,” and we know damn well that the US Founders considered Black people, Indigenous people, women, and poor whites inferior to propertied whites and as unfit for citizenship in the propertarian republic they formed. The American “revolution” – the breakoff from England announced in the Declaration of Independence – was an abject disaster for North American indigenous and Black people – a big green light to accelerated “Indian removal” and the opening of new land for the expansion of chattel slavery.

Joe, I’ve got a PhD in American History, and I’m here to tell you that the US national experience has been very much about making history blindly, running away from America’s ugly past and present. A perfect example of this historical blindness is your recurrent claim that racist and authoritarian Trumpism is a bizarre anomaly, a weird aberration completely outside the real tolerant, and democratic “soul of the nation.” How absurd: please see the sixth chapter of my most recent book This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America, titled “America Was Never Great: On The Soul of This Nation.’”It provides a chilling record of horror that is a direct and explicit refutation of your claim. Here’s a decent book for you to consult on this topic of America hiding and running from – and hiding – its real history: William Appleman Williams, The Great Evasion: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the Wisdom of Admitting the Heretic Into the Dialogue About America's Future (1964).

3. Biden: Once at war, we are now choosing the highest possible partnership, made possible through John’s leadership. I mean that sincerely. Think about it. While in Hanoi, I visited a marker depicting where John — what John — where John had endured all the pain. Imprisoned five and a half years. Solitary confinement for two years. Given an opportunity — an opportunity to come home if he just said a couple things. He was beaten, bloodied, bones broken, isolated, tortured, left unable to raise his arms above his shoulders again. As I stood there paying my respects, I thought about how much I missed my friend. And it’s not hyperbole…I [also] thought about how much America missed John right now, how much America needed John’s courage and foresight and vision. I thought about what John stood for, what he fought for, what he was willing to die for. I thought about what we owed John, what I owed him, and what we owe each other — we owe each other — we owed each other as well — and Americans as well.

Street: Hey Joe, I have no idea what that first sentence meant. Do you? You needed better friends! McCain was a legendarily reckless US admiral’s fortunate son and flyboy who was justly imprisoned for being part of a massive criminal and imperialist assault on the people of Vietnam. He was trying to bomb women and children as part of a pitiless attack on a poor peasant nation by the most lethal Superpower in history. I don’t miss that imperialist, pro-business supporter of big tax cuts for the already super-rich John McCain at all. I’ve never once heard an American say they miss John McCain.

4. Biden: You see, John is one of those patriots who, when they die, their voices are never silent. They still speak to us. They tug at both our hearts and our conscience. And they pose the most profound questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we believe? What will we be? For John, it was country first.

Street: Hey, Joe, do you have any idea how fascist that sounds? “Country first,” WTF.  Try HUMANITY FIRST! That’s what my dad taught me, Joe.  He used to say, “Paul, your proper reference group is humanity, not nation or tribe.” 

(AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) ask why you have yet to declare a climate emergency? Why have you yet to declare a climate emergency? Hundred of Arizonians have died!  You promised no new drilling on fossil fuels. Why have you yet to declare a climate emergency? Not (inaudible) —

Street: That’s a decent question.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Sit down!

Street: the audience members saying that should have added “and shut the F up about the biggest issue of our or any time, brought to us by US-led global capitalism, the system that John McCain and Joe Biden have dedicated their lives to serving.”)  

5. Biden: democracy never is easy, as we just demonstrated. (Laughter.) The cause — the cause is worth giving our all, for democracy makes all things possible. Let me begin with the core principles. Democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty. Regardless of party, that means respecting free and fair elections; accepting the outcome, win or lose. (Applause.) It means you can’t love your country only when you win. (Applause.) Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence. Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America. (Applause.) It’s undemocratic, and it must never be normalized to advance political power.

And democracy means respecting the institutions that govern a free society. That means adhering to the timeless words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” A mission statement embodied in our Constitution, our system of separation of powers and checks and balances…. I’m here to speak about another threat to our democracy that we all too often ignore: the threat to our political institutions, to our Constitution itself, and the very character of our nation…Democracy is maintained by adhering to the Constitution and the march to perfecting our union…For centuries, the American Constitution has been a model for the world, with other countries adopting ‘We the People’ as their North Star as well.

… The MAGA extremists across the country have made it clear where they stand. So, the challenge for the rest of America — for the majority of Americans is to make clear where we stand.

Do we still believe in the Constitution? Do we believe in the basic decency and respect? The whole country should honestly ask itself — and I mean this sincerely — what it wants and understand the threats to our democracy. I believe very strongly that the defining feature of our democracy is our Constitution.

Street: Hey Joe: the United States is an abject plutocracy, characterized by the rule of the monied Few, to whom you sold your political soul many years ago (see this account of your career I penned in 2019).  There’s a ton of empirical data and published research on this. A vast majority of US-Americans think health insurance should be de-commodified and made a human right in the US. Most Americans by far support progressive taxation and meaningful government action to reduce economic inequality, reduce the disproportionate influence of money on politics, and meaningfully tackle the runaway climate crisis. So what? Who cares? None of these opinions and much more that the majority believes determines policy in the US. As the distinguished liberal political scientists Benjamin Page (Northwestern) and Marin Gilens (Princeton) showed in their expertly researched 2017 book Democracy in America?:

“the best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans actually have little or no impact on the making of federal government policy.  Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups – especially business corporations – have had much more political clout…[so that] the general public has been virtually powerless…Majorities of Americans favor…programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes.  Most Americans also want to cut ‘corporate welfare.’ Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies [and programs].”

Nothing that has taken place in the last eight years remotely challenges that judgement. Quite the opposite.

It isn’t just on the political economy issues that Gilens and Page emphasized that the great American “democracy” defies its holy words of democracy with icy deeds of autocracy. Majority opinion is flouted on one issue after another in “the world’s greatest democracy.”  Some especially dramatic examples are majority support for abortion rights, gun control, and affirmative action, and for the prohibition of discrimination in commercial services, all of which have been rejected and deemed unconstitutional by the current Christian Fascist US Supreme Court.  

And guess what, Joe, your holy Constitution is a big part of the problem. It’s long past time to acknowledge the profoundly undemocratic, minority rule nature of the US constitutional set-up, which drastically overrepresents the nation’s most revanchist and reactionary, fascist, racist, fundamentalist, gun-worshipping and woman-hating sections. The critical Minority Rule mechanisms include the following:

+ an undemocratic Electoral College system that renders millions of popular presidential votes irrelevant while focusing presidential elections on a small handful of contested states while grossly inflating the electoral power of the nation’s most reactionary regions and states. The loser of the popular vote has been installed via the Electoral College in two of the last six presidential elections – George W. Bush in 2000 (with some openly Orwellian help from the Supreme Court in 2001) and Donald Trump in 2016), with disastrous consequence for the composition of the absurdly powerful US Supreme Court (see below) among other things.

+ strictly time-staggered elections for federal legislative offices and the presidency.

+ an unnecessarily bicameral legislature with an exceptionally powerful upper chamber – the US Senate.

+ a grossly undemocratic and right-leaning US Senate apportionment regime that grants each state two representatives (Senators) regardless of population size. (If liberal and progressive, multiracial and multi-ethnic California, home to 39,237,836, had the same populace-to Senator ratio as super white, rural, and far-right Wyoming [pop. 578,803], it would have 135 US Senators. If the “blue” [Democratic] New York City borough of Brooklyn were a state and US Senators were apportioned there with the same populace-to-Senator ratio as “red” [Republican] Wyoming, it would have none 9 U.S. Senators).

+ remarkable freedom for individual states to undemocratically manipulate representation in the more democratically apportioned branch of Congress, the US House of Representatives.

+ federalist “states’ rights” whereby fifty states possess remarkable autonomous power to make  policy in defiance of majority national public opinion within their own separate executive, legislative and judicial branches.

+ the awesome autocratic, God-like power of judicial review granted to a presidentially and lifetime appointed and Senate-vetted Simon Says Supreme Court that is free to violate majority opinion on any matter at all.

Any country that makes this set-up their political model and “North Star” would be badly deluded to think it is a blueprint for democracy and liberty. The US isn’t a democracy, it’s a capitalist plutocracy and  empire working with a slaveowners’ constitution from the 18^th Century. It  possesses the highest incarceration rate of any nation on Earth, by the way.

And Joe, all this anti-democracy is richly consistent with the world view of your beloved US founders. It bears the living imprint of the nation’s 18th Century rulers and constitution framers – the militantly propertarian, racist, and sexist slaveowners, gentry, and merchant capitalists of the early republic, for whom democracy and popular sovereignty were the ultimate nightmares. Drawn from the elite propertied segments in the new nation, most of the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention shared their compatriot John Jay’s view that “Those who own the country ought to govern it.” As the celebrated U.S. historian Richard Hofstader noted in his classic 1948 text, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It: “In their minds, liberty was linked not to democracy but to property.” Democracy was a dangerous concept to them, signaling “unchecked rule by the masses,” which was “sure to bring arbitrary redistribution of property, destroying the very essence of liberty.”

Protection of “property” (meaning the people who owned large amounts of it) was “the main object of government” for all but one of the U.S. Constitution’s framers (James Wilson), as constitutional historian Jennifer Nedelsky has noted. The non-affluent, non-propertied and slightly propertied popular majority was for the framers what Nedelsky calls “a problem to be contained.” Democracy – the rule of the majority – was the last thing the nation’s holy Founders wanted to see break out in their new republic. Anyone who doubts this should read The Federalist Papers, written by the leading advocates of the U.S. Constitution to garner support for their preferred form of national government in 1787 and 1788. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued that democracies were “spectacles of turbulence … incompatible with … the rights of property.” Democratic governments gave rise, Madison felt, to “factious leaders” who could “kindle a flame” among dangerous masses for “wicked projects” like “abolition of debts” and “an equal division of property. … Extend the [geographic] sphere [of the U.S. republic],” Madison wrote, and it becomes “more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and act in union with each other.”

At the Constitutional Convention, Madison backed an upper U.S. legislative assembly (the Senate) of elite property holders meant to check a coming “increase of population” certain to “increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings” [emphasis added]. “These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former.”

In Federalist No. 35, the future first U.S. secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, argued that the common people found their proper political representatives among the small class of wealthy merchant capitalists. “The idea of an actual representation of all classes of people by persons of each class,” Hamilton wrote, “is altogether visionary.” The “weight and superior acquirements of the merchants render them more equal” than the “other classes,” Hamilton proclaimed.

In Hofstader’s 1948 account, the New England clergyman Jeremy Belknap captured the fundamental idea behind the US Founders’ curious notion of what they liked to call “popular government.” “Let it stand as a principle,” Belknap wrote to an associate, “that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught…that they are unable to govern themselves.”

6. Biden: But as we know, we know how damaged our institutions of democracy — the judiciary, the legislature, the executive — have become — become in the eyes of the American people, even the world, from attacks from within the past few years… Many of you travel internationally. Many of you know people from around the world. I’d be surprised if you heard anything different than the concern about: Are we okay? Is the democracy going to be sustained?... there is something dangerous happening in America now. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy: the MAGA Movement…Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, adhere to the MAGA extremist ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with Republicans my whole career. But there is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it. My friends, they’re not hiding their attacks. They’re openly promoting them — attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.

Did you ever think we’d be having debates in the year — stage of your careers where banning books — banning books and burying history?

Extremists in Congress — more determined to shut down the government, to burn the place down than to let the people’s business be done.

Our U.S. military — and this in not hyperbole; I’ve said it for the last two years — is the strongest military in the history of the world. Not just the strongest in the world — in the history of the world. It’s the most diverse, the most powerful in the history of the world. And it’s being accused of being weak and “woke” by the opposition.

One guy in Alabama is holding up the promotion of every — hundreds of these officers.

Frankly, these extremists have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. (Laughter.) No, I’m serious.

They’re pushing a notion the defeated former President expressed when he was in office and believes applies only to him. And this is a dangerous notion: This president is above the law, with no limits on power.

Trump says the Constitution gave him, quote, “the right to do whatever he wants as President,” end of quote. I’ve never even heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.

We see the headlines. Quote, “sweeping expansion of presidential power.” Their goal to, quote, “alter the balance of power by increasing the President’s authority over every part of the federal government,” end of quote.

What do they intend to do once they erode the constitutional order of checks and balances and separation of powers? Limit the independence of federal agencies and put them under the thumb of a president? Give the President the power to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated if he doesn’t like what it’s being spent for? Not veto — he doesn’t like what it’s being spent for — it’s there. Get rid of longstanding protections for civil servants?

Just consider these as actual quotes from MAGA — the MAGA movement. Quote, “I am your retribution.” “Slitting throats” of civil servants, replacing them with extreme political cronies. MAGA extremists proclaim support for law enforcement only to say, “We…” — quote, “We must destroy the FBI.”

It’s not one person. It’s the controlling element of the House Republican Party.

Whitewash attacks of January 6th by calling the spearing and stomping of police a leg- — quote, a “legitimate political discourse.”

Did you ever think you’d hear leaders of political parties in the United States of America speak like that? Seizing power, concentrating power, attempting to abuse power, purging and packing key institutions, spewing conspiracy theories, spreading lies for profit and power to divide America in every way, inciting violence against those who risk their lives to keep America safe, weaponizing against the very soul of who we are as Americans.

This MAGA threat is the threat to the brick and mortar of our democratic institutions. But it’s also a threat to the character of our nation and gives our — that gives our Constitution life, that binds us together as Americans in common cause.

Street: Mr. President, there’s a word for your “MAGA threat.”  You don’t want to say it out loud.  It’s called fascism. Yes, fascism, a word you kind of used, prefaced by “semi,” when speaking candidly to Wall Street campaign donors last year.  Forget about the semi, just say fascism. Here is an excellent statement containing a serious definition from the group Refuse Fascism, on whose editorial board I sit:

“The Republi-fascist Party has been purged of dissenting voices. The mass fascist movement has hardened in the wake of their January 6 coup attempt. Fascist initiatives around restricting voting, immigration and abortion rapidly advance in statehouses across the country. The election of Biden has not eliminated the danger, it has only bought some time…Fascism is not just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies. It is a qualitative change in how society is governed. Once in power, fascism’s defining feature is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive ‘traditional values.’ Truth is obliterated and fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build their movement and consolidate power.”

Trump and Trumpism and the Republican/Republi-fascist party now check all these and more boxes (I would add palingenetic ultra-nationalism, cults of personality, and a virulent and obsessive hatred of socialism) that identify them as part of the political pathology that is fascism.

“No idea what they are talking about”? The Trump MAGA movement now has a big, elaborate, and detailed plan for the Christian white nationalist – neofascist – makeover in how American society is governed. Read the recent 900-plus page “Project 25” document put out by the Trumpist Heritage Foundation and the “Agenda 47” link on the Trump campaign Website.  And look at the noxious, ultra-reactionary policy that has been implemented in “red” states over the last two-plus years, Joe. (And actually, Mr. President, you seem to contradict yourself on this point since you go here into precisely some of their detailed plans: “Limit the independence of federal agencies and put them under the thumb of a president…Give the President the power to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated if he doesn’t like what it’s being spent for…Get rid of longstanding protections for civil servants.”)     

 Joe, I am afraid that this Republi-fascism that you call “the MAGA threat” is an outcome of your beloved capitalist system and its unmentionably bourgeois democracy.  That system recurrently undermines mass faith in democracy while it recurrently generates crises that require big government intervention.  At the same time, it cultivates, exacerbates, and reinforces toxic racial, ethnic, cultural, and sexual divisions among the populace. e. To make matter worse, this Republi-MAGA-fascism is deeply enabled by your cherished US constitutional order, which vastly inflates the power of the nation’s most reactionary and revanchist regions, people, and states in the ways I discussed above (see #5).

As I’m sure you are aware, Joe, the national constitution’s archaic and democracy-flunking Electoral College will require you to beat Trump by 4 to 5 percentage votes in the 2024 popular vote if you want to keep your place in the White House in 2025. And Trump is basically tied with you in match-up polls right now – yes, tied with you despite a grand total of 91 felony counts along with at least three key civil cases against him.

Jesus, Joe, what a fucked-up situation! Have you thought about stepping aside for a different, more charismatic, and younger Democratic candidate in 2024 (definitely NOT Kamala Harris, who is one of the worst politicians I’ve ever seen.)

Not that I think that would make much difference. As Refuse Fascism notes, “The Democratic Party will not stop this nightmare. Trump, fascist Fox News, and the Republi-fascist Party have branded them as enemies and ‘traitors.’ Yet, the Democratic Party will consistently pull to try to work with, conciliate with and collaborate with them.”

That that is your constant alleged claim to fame, Joe, for which you endlessly seek applause: working with, conciliating, and collaborating with the fascist Republican Party, in the name of “getting things done” – things like trying to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age, like criminally and lethally invading and occupying Iraq, like opening up formerly pristine Arctic regions to eco-cidal oil drilling , and like provoking Russia and China in ways that could lead to nuclear war.

“There can be no reconciliation with fascism except on the terms of the fascists. Fascism must be resolutely opposed,” Refuse Fascism says….yes, it must, in the streets and public squares, not merely in the time-staggered elections that you want us to think as the only politics that matters. Joe.  And for all that to happen, fascism must be properly called out by name, without the prefix “semi-“ required, Joe Biden.

And by the way, Joe, you left out something critical recently in the news about the MAGA king: the orange fascist pig went on a gun-shopping campaign stop in the exact same gun store that sold weapons to a racist mass shooter who “opened fire in a Dollar General store in a predominantly Black Jacksonville, Florida neighborhood, killing three people, all of whom were Black, last August. The shooter used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, at least one of which was painted with a swastika. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the shooter ‘hated Black people’…..Donald Trump,” The New Republic reported  last Tuesday, “took some time to visit the gun store that sold weapons to the racist Jacksonville, Florida, mass shooter…

When the Jacksonville shooting happened, Trump did not issue any statement on the tragedy. But you could argue that this campaign stop is a kind of tacit statement. He put the spotlight on Palmetto State Armory, praised its inventory, and tried to offer it business.”

Hey Joe:” how fascist was that?