White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday called Republican criticism of Joe Biden‘s voting rights speech in Atlanta ‘hilarious.’
She defended the president after Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called Biden’s speech ‘profoundly, profoundly unpresidential’ and GOP Senator Mitt Romney said Biden was taking the same ‘tragic road’ as Donald Trump in trying to undermine the credibility of American elections.
‘I know there has been a lot of claims of the offensive nature of the speech yesterday, which is hilarious on many levels, given how many people sat silently over the last four years for the former president,’ Psaki said when asked about the remarks at her daily press briefing.
‘But I would note that in our view and the president’s view, what is far more offensive is the effort to suppress people’s basic right to exercise who they want to support and who they want to elect,’ she noted.
Romney voted for one count of Trump’s impeachment for his role, for his role in inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump was ultimately acquitted by the entire Senate, which included McConnell’s support for the acquittal.
The Republican senator from Utah also voted to convict Trump on one count in his first impeachment trial and was a harsh critic of the former president, repeatedly earning Trump’s ire.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Republican criticism of Joe Biden’s voting rights speech in Atlanta ‘hilarious’
Republicans ratched up the rhetoric on Wednesday in response to Biden’s own fiery address, where he accused the GOP of standing on the wrong side of history when it came to voting rights.
Romney tore into Biden after his Atlant speech. He said Biden was taking the same ‘tragic road’ as Trump in undermining the democratic process in a searing speech on the Senate floor.
He also urged Democrats to think about ‘what would it mean for them’ to abolish the filibuster now and see themselves potentially losing Congress and the White House in the near future — and chided them for decrying it as racist.
Romney delivered a sharp rebuke of Biden and the Democratic Party on the Senate floor Tuesday night in response to the president’s voting rights speech in Georgia
‘He also accused a number of my good and principled colleagues in the Senate of having sinister, even racist inclinations,’ Romney said. ‘So much for unifying the country and working across the aisle.’
McConnell also let loose on the president.
‘The president’s rant – rant – yesterday was incorrect, incoherent, and beneath his office,’ McConnell said in his remarks on the Senate floor, calling Biden’s speech ‘profoundly, profoundly unpresidential.’
In response, Biden tried to meet with McConnell when he was at the Capitol to pay his respects to the late Senate leader Harry Reid, whose remains were lying in state in the Capitol rotunda.
The two men did not connnect, however.
Biden seemed to shrug off the attacks.
‘I like Mitch McConnell. He’s a friend,’ he told reporters in the Capitol when asked about what McConnell remarks.
President Joe Biden tried to meet with Mitch McConnell during a stop on Capitol Hill on Wednesday after McConnell slammed him in a speech on Senate floor
The war of words comes as both sides prepare for this November’s midterm election, which will determine what political party controls the House and Senate next year. The battle centers on voting rights legislation that Democrats want to pass, saying it will protect the right vote, and Republicans roundly oppose, saying elections are state issues.
Biden made the case for Democrats in a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, which led to the Senate Republican leader’s response.
Biden ‘delivered a deliberately divisive speech,’ McConnell charged. ‘It was designed to pull our country further apart.’
McConnell blasted Biden for comparing those who opposed federal voting laws ‘to literal traitors’ and said he was demonizing ‘Americans who disagreed with him.’
‘He called millions of Americans his domestic enemies,’ the GOP leader charged.
‘Look I’ve known liked and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday,’ he noted.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell tore into President Joe Biden, calling his Atlanta speech ‘incorrect, incoherent, and beneath his office’
In his speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, President Joe Biden repeatedly attacked Republicans for blocking voting rights legislation and accused them of weaponizing the filibuster
In his speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, Biden repeatedly attacked Republicans for blocking voting rights legislation and accused them of weaponizing the filibuster.
‘The filibuster is not used by Republicans to bring the Senate together but to pull it further apart,’ he said. ‘The filibuster has been weaponized and abused.’
And Biden framed the debate as a political choice – to support or divide the country.
‘Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?,’ Biden asked.
‘This is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy,’ he said, adding ‘Each one of the members of the Senate is going to be judged by history on where they stood before the vote and where they stood after the vote.’