White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki found criticism of President Joe Biden’s speech on voting rights “hilarious,” clapping back at those who objected to his remarks this week.
While Psaki characterized the president’s words Tuesday on Democrats’ efforts to overhaul election laws as a “strong speech,” others like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Biden’s remarks “unpresidential.”
The press secretary told reporters on Wednesday that McConnell’s view was “disappointing” as Biden considers the Kentucky Republican to be “a friend.”
“I know there has been a lot of claim 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 during the White House press briefing.
She remarked that what “is more offensive is the effort to suppress people’s basic right to exercise who they want to support and who they want to elect,” contending that it should not be “a partisan thing.”
“And that’s why he gave such a strong speech yesterday,” Psaki declared.
But McConnell joined many others in criticizing Biden’s speech, which was punctuated at times with his angry, raised voice.
“So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered?” Biden said as he spoke on the campus of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College. “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 called anyone who opposes his radical political agenda his “domestic enemy.” pic.twitter.com/VbOH6Q8dTl
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) January 11, 2022
McConnell noted how the president “called millions of Americans his domestic enemies” in the speech and “shouted that if you disagree with him, you’re George Wallace.”
“George Wallace?” McConnell said in remarks from the Senate floor on Wednesday. “If you don’t pass the laws he wants, you’re Bull Connor, and if you oppose giving Democrats untrammeled, one-party control of the country, well you’re Jefferson Davis.”
“How profoundly, profoundly unpresidential,” McConnell said. “Look, I’ve known, liked, and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday.”
.@LeaderMcConnell: Biden “delivered a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart…He compared…a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors. How profoundly, profoundly unpresidential…I did not recognize the man at the podium[.]” pic.twitter.com/UnzXDWBFyr
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 12, 2022
Asked about the criticism on Wednesday, Psaki dismissed McConnell’s take on the president’s speech, bringing up his own voting record.
‘If making it more difficult to vote is not silencing the voices of people … I don’t know what is’ — Press secretary Jen Psaki described Sen. Mitch McConnell’s record on voting rights following his recent criticism of Democrats on the topic pic.twitter.com/MNg85EBW6q
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 11, 2022
“He considers Mitch McConnell a friend and that is true,” Psaki said. “That is why it is even more disappointing that someone who has supported and advocated for voting rights in the past… and repeatedly voted for the extension of voting rights protections is on the other side of the argument now.”
She claimed Biden’s words “struck a nerve” with some Republicans, but she went on to contend that it was “more irresponsible, unbecoming, and divisive” that states with Republican leadership “perpetuate the big lie” by enacting laws addressing election security.
“We have seen evidence of that in 19 states which passed 34 laws attacking voting rights,” Psaki said, adding “and that’s why he’s standing up and made the passionate case he made yesterday.”
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