On Tuesday, President Biden showed his true colors.
While on a video call with a Latino voter group campaigning for Kamala Harris, he took advantage of a prime opportunity to express his feelings about Donald Trump, his predecessor, saying “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
Trump’s response to this was to embrace it entirely, driving to his Madison, WI rally in a campaign-labeled garbage truck wearing a safety vest, taking questions from reporters in the process (which Kamala rarely manages to do). Biden was addressing a joke from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who while speaking before Trump at a rally in Madison Square Garden had likened Puerto Rico to the Pacific garbage patch, a remark heavily challenged by Trump in subsequent days.
Biden’s clear disgust towards Trump supporters speaks volumes on the validity of the purported unity touted by the Harris-Walz campaign, and shows what it is truly made of: nothing. Democrats have waged a systematic campaign of slander, character assassination and hate against both Trump and Republicans in general over the past four years, seeking to dehumanize their opposition and make violence, namely two assassination attempts, commonplace and acceptable.
Harris’ own rhetoric towards Trump and his followers is further evidence of this.
In an Oct. 23 CNN town hall, Harris affirmed her view that Trump is a fascist. Forget finding valid policy differences or citing past political experience, Kamala’s campaign has devolved into just calling Trump a fascist and praying voters buy into her name-calling. This fundamentally fails to be the kind of “unity” campaign she purports to have.
Past Democrats during the Clinton and Biden campaigns used the same playbook. Hillary famously called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” Barack Obama accused him of using rhetoric to help ISIS. Less than a month before that election in 2016, then-Vice President Biden said he would like to physically beat Trump “behind the gym”, adding two years later in 2018 that if they had been in high school together, he would have “beat the hell” out of him.
More recently, in July, President Biden had to walk back his comment that Trump was “an existential threat” that “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.” Shortly after that remark, Thomas Matthew Crooks followed Biden’s recommendation and put Trump in his bullseye, shooting him in the ear and killing an innocent bystander, Pennsylvania firefighter and father of two Corey Comperatore.
Harris’ “closing remarks” on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. show more of this, baiting voters to embrace Democrats not because of policy or Kamala’s personal strengths, but because Trump must be seen as some kind of Nazi threat to democracy.
In short, Democrats’ dual attempts to both advertise themselves as a party of unity while also leveling wildly violent and antagonistic rhetoric against Trump directly contradict their own interests, alienating voters in the process. Trump’s cheerful and defiant response to Biden’s ‘garbage’ remark is in keeping with the likely will of the voters, to reject the failed Democrat smear campaign of hate and violence, and cast their vote for change, a vote for Trump.
Sam Marchand
member, College Republicans of Notre Dame
The College Republicans of Notre Dame have agreed, along with the College Democrats of Notre Dame, to write a bi-weekly debate column in The Observer's Viewpoint section in the name of free, civil discourse in the 2024 election cycle. You can reach out to the College Republicans at creps@nd.edu.
