For many activists on the left, President Biden stopped short of a political reality they believe is more than incipient when it comes to fascism in America. Even so, on Monday he dismissed any notion that he was calling Trump’s supporters extremists and threats to democracy.
GOP members and some moderate Democrats have charged that Biden is further dividing the nation with his comments that Make America Great Again (MAGA) is akin to “semi-fascism.”
“I want to be very clear upfront,” Biden said during a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee. “Not every Republican is a MAGA-Republican. Not every Republican embraces the extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with mainstream Republicans my whole career.
“But the extreme-minded Republicans in Congress have chosen to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division, but together we can, and we must choose a different path,” he continued.
He added that the U.S. had been able to overcome challenges because it has been “a nation of unity, of hope, of optimism, not a nation of division and violence and hatred that is being preached by some others.”
His Labor Day speech didn’t go as far in its accusation of Trump as he did earlier in Philadelphia in which Trump was named as responsible for much of the “assault” on democratic rights. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he said.
A breaking news story at the time was that a Trump-appointed judge backed Trump’s request to have a special master appointed to review documents seized from his Florida home by the Justice Department. People familiar with the ruling think it will severely hamper the review of the documents and the extent to which many of the top-secret documents jeopardize national security.
Biden expressed no comments on the decision.