Chris Wallace Surprised Biden Went ‘So Harshly Negative’ Against Trump This Early With Insurrection Speech/Nazi Comparisons
CNN anchor Chris Wallace expressed surprise that President Joe Biden would “go so harshly negative” against ex-President Donald Trump so early by torching him in a speech about the January 6 insurrection, particularly by “going quote ‘Full Hitler.'”
President Biden has been escalating his attacks on Trump for months at off-camera campaign events, and took it to eleven during his first televised campaign speech of the 2024 campaign.
On Friday afternoon, Biden took to the lectern at Montgomery County Community College Blue Bell, Pennsylvania near Valley Forge to deliver a blistering speech pegged to the January 6 insurrection that included hitting Trump for echoing Nazis.
Journalists Jonah Goldberg, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Reihan Salam, and Kara Swisher joined Wallace for this week’s edition of CNN’s The Chris Wallace Show on Saturday morning, during which Wallace remarked it was “surprising” to see Biden go so hard so early, particularly about the Nazi stuff:
WALLACE: It was always clear if the presidential race came down to Trump versus Biden, both candidates would end up trying to sell themselves by bashing their opponent. But President Biden has decided to make his move surprisingly early, going harshly negative this first week of January.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
WALLACE: Two major speeches offer an early sense of President Biden’s reelection strategy. Friday at Valley Forge where George Washington’s army camped during the Revolutionary War, Biden argued Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power. Our campaign is different.
WALLACE: On Monday he will speak at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, the site of a 2015 racist massacre.
BIDEN: The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.
WALLACE: A concerted effort to court black voter, only half of whom approved of Biden’s work in a recent poll, a sharp drop from the 87 percent who backed him in 2020. The Biden campaign hoping the speeches and new ads draw a starker contrast with Trump. Aides telling CNN Biden may go full Hitler, directly comparing Trump’s rhetoric to the Nazi leader.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. (END VIDEO TAPE)
WALLACE (on camera): Lulu, is Biden smart to go this hard at Trump, to go, quote, full Hitler, in the first week in January? I mean I certainly expected it in the fall, I certainly expected it October or whatever, but it’s really early to be doing this.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Some would argue it’s a little late. I mean, have you looked at his poll numbers? Have you seen how people are seeing his presidency? And I think he’s also deeply worried. I mean I think we are now heading into the general election. We kind of know —
WALLACE: Even though we haven’t had the primaries yet.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I know. But it feels like we already know that these are going to be the two people who are going to be facing off against each other. And Biden is taking the fight to Trump. And I think by letting Trump just sort of dominate the airwaves, I think it has been a mistake. And I think it is important to remind people what exactly the fight is about.
WALLACE: Jonah, the MAGA extremists argument, which is the one that in the fall of 2022 Biden made, worked very well for him and for Democrats in the midterm. What do you think of him going that argument and literally in the speech on Friday talking about Nazis and comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Nazi rhetoric, doing it this early?
GOLDBERG: I think that’s the right question. It is a tactical question to me as just a matter of politics. I would have his surrogates doing that now. There’s a real problem, or there’s a real potential of this all sort of becoming background noise and there’s no shock value to it by the time you get to the general election. And so it’s going to be dismissed by a lot of people on the right pretty early because argumentum ad Hitlerum is an old tactic of the left, and even if it has more salience now. But I just feel like it is a little early to come out of the box like this because I don’t know who it’s going to persuade, unless the point is just purely persuading his own coalition to come home.
Watch above via CNN’s The Chris Wallace Show.
