President Biden on Wednesday called former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement the “most extreme” group in recent US history and claimed gay kids could face school segregation if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Biden, speaking about the leaked Supreme Court decision that could overturn the landmark abortion rights case, argued the implications are vast.
“What happens if you have a state change the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children?” Biden said at the White House.
“Is that legit under the way that the decision is written? What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history — in recent American history.”
Biden said the decision could have far-reaching effects by eliminating privacy rights linked to the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down state restrictions on contraceptives.
“Outrageous! This is from a man who repeatedly praised segregationists,” tweeted RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel. “Biden promised to unite the country, but it’s been smears and lies instead.”
Trump’s former acting attorney general Matt Whitaker wrote, “Some might say…deplorable?” — linking Biden’s barb to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 claim that Trump’s base included a “basket of deplorables,” which Trump in turn used to rally his supporters.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki echoed Biden at a briefing on Wednesday afternoon, saying, “You will see him call out more places where he feels there are extreme policies and extreme comments and extreme positions that are unfortunately overtaking far too much of the [Republican] Party.”
Psaki said that Biden also would invoke the mantra, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”
But Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy pressed Psaki on Biden’s suggestion that young people could face segregation based on sexual orientation.
“What is he talking about?” Doocy asked.
Psaki said Biden was referring to a recent Florida law that restricts the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Critics dub it the “Don’t say gay” law.
“We’ve seen extreme laws that target LGBTQ families, their kids across the country, and I think what he’s saying is we don’t know what they’re capable of given what they’ve already done to date,” Psaki said.
“Which state is trying to segregate LGBTQ children in the classroom?” Doocy followed up.
“I think we’ve seen laws that are incredibly discriminatory,” Psaki replied. “That’s what the president’s referring to and the fact that he doesn’t know what additional steps could be taken by extreme wings of the party that would rather divide rather than work on issues that the American people actually are focused on actually impacting them.”
Although hundreds of Trump supporters pillaged the Capitol last year to disrupt certification of Biden’s election victory, critics of Biden’s “most extreme” remark pointed out that other groups committed deadly acts of terrorism, such as al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan.
Biden and Democrats are urging supporters to turn out to vote in the November midterm elections to help legislatively reverse the looming abortion ruling, which would allow states to set their own policies.
The president on Tuesday said that the fate of birth control and same-sex marriage was at risk if Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion ultimately takes effect following its unprecedented leak.
Trump’s MAGA movement includes high-profile LGBT members, including Richard Grenell, who in 2020 became the nation’s first openly gay or lesbian cabinet-level official when Trump appointed him as acting national intelligence director.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump posed with a rainbow pride flag and said that Caitlyn Jenner, who is transgender, was welcome to use any bathroom she pleased in Trump Tower.
As president, Trump in 2017 reimposed a military ban on transgender members, but he also launched a global push to decriminalize homosexuality. Trump’s West Wing adviser Kellyanne Conway defended his record, declaring Trump “the first president to start as president approving of gay marriage.”
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