MSNBC host Joy Reid spoke with commentator Dean Obeidallah about Biden turning up the heat in his rhetoric about MAGA Republicans in an early September broadcast.
Reid suggested that she and her guest had both faced backlash in the past for labeling Republicans as fascists, claiming they now had been vindicated. "Dean Obeidallah, you and I have – you know, we’ve been called ‘out of our minds’ for saying ‘fascism,’ you know, and like Susan, we’ve been saying this for more than a year. We’ve been saying this for a long time, my brother, and getting beat up for it."
Reid stressed the idea that clear language must be used to assess political realities.
"But the reality is, you have to call a thing what it is and be definitional about it. The word MAGA doesn’t mean anything other than if you go back, it’s what fascists used to say, ‘make America great again.’ It’s very hard to escape it," she warned.
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She then observed that President Biden has sharpened his recent rhetoric against political opponents, claiming that he previously has a history of moderate rhetoric.
"What do you make of the fact that Biden got there?" she asked. "Biden is the most Biden-y Biden person in the world, meaning, he never wants to offend anybody. He’s very – he tries to be inoffensive all the time, and the fact that he got there, do you think that is what maybe – I don’t know, what do you make of the fact that he finally got to where we have been for quite a while?’
Obeidallah joked that Biden was inspired by reading his tweets, but suggested he had been warning followers frequently that the Republican Party is dangerous.
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"Daily reminder, today’s GOP is no longer a political movement," Obeidallah warned. "It is a fascist movement that has embraced white nationalism and wants to impose its religious beliefs as law. Boom. Shorthand, we call it the GOP. That’s what we’re dealing with."
He added further that the GOP is a threat to democracy in America itself, "We’re dealing with a movement-as president Biden talked about, that-political violence and cult worship is how democracies die."
Obeidallah also praised Biden for making a distinction between MAGA Republicans and the Republican Party as a whole.
"So it’s no longer Republicans versus Democrats, it’s Americans versus MAGA, and that’s the fight and the framing I’d like to see going forward."
