The White House scoffed at Congressional Republicans on Wednesday who criticized President Joe Biden’s speech slamming the Senate for blocking bills that would federalize state and local elections.
“I know that there has been a lot of claim of the offensive nature of the speech yesterday, which is hilarious on many levels,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, pointing to Republican silence during former President Donald Trump’s presidency.
During his speech on Wednesday, Biden, a former senator, accused Republican and even some Democrat senators of siding with racists by refusing to vote for Democrat-led bills that would federalize election laws.
Sen. Mitt Romney complained Wednesday that Biden “accused a number of my good and principled colleagues in the Senate of having sinister, even racist inclinations” and said the president was not interested in “unifying the country” with that kind of rhetoric.
Romney said Biden was traveling “the same tragic road taken by President Trump, casting doubt on the reliability of American elections.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell described Biden’s speech as a “rant” that was “incorrect, incoherent, and beneath his office.”
“This institution was constructed as a firewall against exactly this kind of rage and false hysteria,” McConnell said. “It falls to the Senate to put America on a better track.”
Psaki admitted that Biden’s speech “clearly struck a nerve” but pointed to Republican support for election integrity laws as evidence that they were opposed to voting rights.
“To us, and to the president what is more irresponsible, unbecoming, and divisive is the coordinated effort by far too many Republicans is to perpetuate the big lie and make it more difficult to vote,” she said.