White House Official Claims Biden’s Speech Attacking Trump Supporters Was About ‘Optimism’

A White House official claimed that President Joe Biden’s Thursday speech that labeled former President Donald Trump’s supporters as a “threat to democracy” was optimistic and had “words of encouragement” during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

“Go to the White House website, WhiteHouse.gov, read the speech for yourself, I’ve read it multiple times,” former Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta told guest host Martha Raddatz in response to a question about criticism of the speech. “I see words of encouragement, I see optimism, a commander in chief who’s calling out to all of us no matter our political affiliation.”

Raddatz cut in, asking it Biden had “given up on” Trump supporters in the wake of Thursday’s speech.

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“What the president has done is said he’ll continue to work with mainstream Republicans, we’ll work with Democrats, that we’ll work with independents to get things done in our country,” Bottoms, who serves as Director of the Office of Public Engagement for Biden, said. “But this MAGA Republican agenda, hate-fueled agenda, that we saw incite violence on our nation’s capital has no place in our democracy. If we’re not intentional in calling it out in our country, everything that our country is built upon is in danger.”

Bottoms also slammed Republicans who criticized Biden’s series of attacks on Trump supporters, which included an accusation that Republicans embraced “semi-fascism” during an Aug. 25 Democratic National Committee fundraiser and attacks on “MAGA Republicans” during a Tuesday speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

“What I would say to that is that this is what MAGA agenda has been about, distorting the truth, it’s been about misleading people, it’s been about putting out information that inflames people,” Bottoms said.

“The president has always stood on the fact that he can work with mainstream Republicans to get things done on behalf of the American people, but it’s also going to take for all of us to stand up to hatred and what the president again continues to say it’s this MAGA agenda, the president has not called out all Republicans he’s been very specific about this MAGA agenda,” Bottoms said.

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