(Headline USA) A day after White House press secretary Karine Jean–Pierre made a gaslighting claim touting President Joe Biden’s distinguished record as a unifying force for the nation, Biden promptly proceeded to disprove her by disparaging Iowa voters.
Jean–Pierre insisted during a Wednesday press conference that Biden had never insulted voters, despite multiple incidents in which Biden has viciously waged partisan attacks against Trump supporters.
BREAKING: Karine Jean-Pierre falsely claims, "One thing the president does not do is insult voters or the American people." Millions of MAGA people scratching their heads. WATCH pic.twitter.com/qcVs69sNwC
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) January 17, 2024
“One thing that the president does not do is insult voters or American people,” said the press secretary.
Her comment comes as multiple Democrats have come under fire for attacking voters who support former President Donald Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, agreed on Wednesday with The View co-hosts’ characterization of rural Trump supporters as “the crazies.”
Biden has made many disparaging remarks about voters, despite Jean-Pierre’s claim to the contrary.
On Thursday, he diminished the significance of rural Iowa voters following Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s historic victory in Monday’s caucus, claiming, “I don’t think Iowa means anything.”
In December 2019, he ripped a voter who had been critical of him as a “damn liar.”
The voter had approached Biden at a campaign event in Iowa and raised concerns about Biden’s age.
“I’m not a Republican,” the man said. “I’ve got two problems with you. One is you’re damn near as old as I am. You’re too old. I’m 83, and I know damn well I don’t have the mental faculties I did … But on the other hand, you sent your son over [to Ukraine] to get a job and work for a gas company where he had no experience… in order to get access for the president.”
Biden responded: “You’re a d**n liar, man. That’s not true and no one has ever said that.”
A few months later, in March 2020, he told another questioner that he was “full of “s**t” and proceeded to escalate matters, even threatening to fight the man.
Joe Biden during the day:
Tries to fight a voter by threatening to take it outside
Joe Biden during the night:
Calls for steady, reassuring leadership
Which Sleepy Joe will we get today? pic.twitter.com/qDpuGsGdNp
— Bobby Eberle (@BobbyEberle13) March 11, 2020
The president also insulted black voters by suggesting they couldn’t really be considered black unless they voted for him.
“Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he said in May 2020.
Then, three months later, Biden suggested that a voter who asked him whether he’d be willing to take a cognitive test was on drugs.
“No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test?” Biden said. “Come on, man. That’s like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test whether you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”
Since becoming president, his demagoguery has grown even more pronounced, including his notorious “red rally,” a 2022 speech delivered in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in which he first accused Republican political opponents of posing a “threat to democracy.”
MAGA proposals are a threat to the very soul of this country.
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 4, 2022
The talking point has now become a staple of his campaign rhetoric.
“These MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump … have abandoned truth and abandoned democracy,” he said in a Jan. 5 speech, also in Philadelphia, during which he compared himself to George Washington while likening Trump and his supporters to Nazis.
“They made their choice,” he continued. “Now the rest of us—Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans–have to make ours.”
Even fellow Democrats have slammed Biden for pushing his divisive rhetoric too far on occasion.
In January 2022, Biden implied that senators who were opposed to ending the filibuster—which would have allowed Democrats to pass a sweeping overhaul of election rules and ensure permanent majorities for themselves—were tantamount to some of the most notorious racists in American history.
“At consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” Biden said. “Do you want to be 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?”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2-ranked Democrat behind then-minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., conceded that it was a smidge over the top.
“Perhaps the president went a little too far in his rhetoric,” Durbin said.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
