DEMONIZING DISSENT: What Biden’s Attack on Trump Supporters Reveals About the Left
Tyler O'Neil /
The elite ruling class harbors deep disdain for the unwashed masses who refuse to get in line behind its agenda. The Left’s leaders often keep their disgust hidden, but occasionally it slips out.
Barack Obama notoriously let the mask slip in April 2008. Of working-class voters in old industrial towns, the Democratic candidate for president said, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Obama initially stood by his comments, but then said he would “deeply regret” the comments if any Americans were offended.
Hillary Clinton, campaigning against Obama at the time in the Democratic primaries, condemned his remarks as “demeaning,” “elitist,” and “out of touch.”
Yet in 2016, she notoriously said: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of [then-presidential candidate Donald] Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.” She described this “basket” as “the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”
So, when President Joe Biden compared Trump supporters to “garbage” on Tuesday, he was following in a long and ignominious line of Democrats who let their disgust with their fellow Americans seep through.
What Did Biden Say?
In online remarks from the White House, Biden spoke Tuesday to rally Latino supporters of his chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden condemned a remark from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” while speaking Sunday before Trump at a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
(Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez quickly said Hinchcliffe’s joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Trump himself told ABC News of Hinchcliffe: “I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”)
“They’re good, decent honorable people,” Biden said of Puerto Ricans in his remarks Tuesday about Trump. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of these people is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”
Biden later released a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, stating that he “referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage.”
“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say,” the president added.
The White House released a transcript of Biden’s remarks, apparently attempting to reframe the quote.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” the transcript reads.
However, when delivering the remarks, Biden ends his sentence at “supporters,” and takes a breath before starting a new sentence beginning with “His.”
Make no mistake: The sitting president of the United States referred to Americans who vote against his chosen successor as “garbage.”
Harris distanced herself from Biden’s comments.
“First of all, he clarified his comments, but let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” she told reporters Wednesday. “I am serious, what I mean, when elected president, I will represent all Americans, including folks who don’t vote for me, and address their needs and their desires.”
Yet Harris herself has an extensive record of demonizing conservatives, from building a legal case against a pro-life journalist who made undercover videos featuring Planned Parenthood officials to demanding that conservative groups disclose their donor lists.
Where Does This Come From?
These Democrats are echoing a broader trend on the Left: The elites think they know how other Americans ought to live.
Americans who make more than $150,000 a year, live in densely populated areas, and have postgraduate degrees are overwhelmingly liberal. In a Napolitan Institute survey, Scott Rasmussen’s RMG Research surveyed a group that Rasmussen describes as the elite 1%, contrasting them with Main Street Americans who don’t fit any of these three criteria.
The elites give Biden an 82% approval rating, compared to his 40% average approval from the rest of Americans.
Rasmussen’s polling found that Americans in the elite 1% are far more likely to support transgender policy, to back government crackdowns on disinformation, to trust government agencies over voters and elected representatives, and to favor climate regulations.
A vast majority (77%) of the elite 1% support rationing the private use of gas, meat, and electricity, while 63% of voters oppose such rationing, Rasmussen found. Elites favor banning gas-powered cars (72%), gas stoves (69%), and private air conditioning (53%), while most voters heavily oppose such measures.
RMG Research also surveyed 500 federal government managers, finding that their views largely align with the elite 1%.
The survey asked respondents: “Does the United States provide too much individual freedom, too much government control, or is the balance about right?”
Most Main Street Americans (62%) said the federal government has somewhat too much control (33%) or far too much control (29%), while 18% said America has about the right balance. Only 13% said Americans have far too much freedom (4%) or somewhat too much freedom (9%).
Meanwhile, nearly half of the elite 1% (47%) said Americans have far too much freedom (28%) or somewhat too much freedom (19%). Most federal government managers (53%) also said Americans had far too much freedom (17%) or somewhat too much freedom (34%).
Only 21% of the elites said the government has too much control, while 31% of federal government managers agreed.
Thirty-nine percent of federal government managers said it would be better for America if only those with college degrees were allowed to vote, and 51% of the elite 1% agreed. Only 15% of all voters said America would be better if only college graduates could vote.
Shockingly, 46% of federal government managers said parents have too much control, while 39% of elites agreed, compared to 17% of all voters. Fifty-four percent of federal government managers said that if given a choice between following their own research and issuing a regulation of which the voters disapprove, they should issue the regulation, rather than listening to the voters (35%).
America has a vast worldview divide between these left-leaning elites and the vast majority of Americans, who the elites seem to consider their natural inferiors.
The Apparatus of Demonization
Some organizations effectively exist to further this ideological divide.
Take the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example. The SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, and it weaponized that reputation to demonize its ideological and political opponents. Today, it maintains a “hate map” plotting mainstream conservative and Christian organizations alongside Klan chapters, suggesting that a similar form of hatred drives both.
Amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that dogged the SPLC in 2019, a former employee called the organization’s hate accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” it works like this: The SPLC supports a cause or policy (transgender orthodoxy, for example). It brands organizations that oppose that policy (Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, the medical organization Do No Harm) as “hate groups” or “antigovernment extremist groups,” putting them on a map with the Klan. This both delegitimizes the SPLC’s opponents and scares donors into ponying up cash.
Conservatives see through the charade, but the Biden-Harris administration apparently hasn’t. In fact, SPLC leaders and staff have gone to the White House at least 18 times under the Biden-Harris administration, and Biden nominated an SPLC lawyer to a top federal judgeship.
The SPLC’s worldview aligns with the elites’ worldview, which aligns with the Biden-Harris administration’s policy. That’s why so much of the Left continues to cite the Southern Poverty Law Center even though conservatives know it has been thoroughly discredited.
As the Left increasingly dominates much of the commanding heights of American culture, conservatives are striving to set up alternative institutions. The new political landscape often breaks down along the lines of class and ideology. The Left has the money and power, and the Right has the values that helped make America what it is today.
Obama, Clinton, and Biden wouldn’t explicitly say that they consider conservatives to be evil. When the mask slips, however, the elites’ disdain for everyday Americans shines through.