NBC's Peter Alexander suggested Sunday that President Biden's comment likening Donald Trump's philosophy to "semi-fascism" undercut his pledge to be a unifier.
"What we're seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy," Biden said at a Democratic National Committee event in Rockville, Maryland, Thursday. "It's not just Trump, it's the entire philosophy that underpins the — I'm going to say something — it's like semi-fascism."
A reported 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020.
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Alexander noted that Biden's more aggressive tone as of late "fires up Democrats" and juices up the base."
"But it also does become problematic because you know, this is a guy who said he wants to be a unifier," Alexander added.
"I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify," Biden's Twitter account read in November 2020. "Who doesn’t see red and blue states, but a United States. And who will work with all my heart to win the confidence of the whole people." He similarly pledged unity in his inauguration speech.
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PBS NewsHour chief correspondent Amna Nawaz offered that the president, in his "semi-fascism" comment, was being "responsive" to Americans who are concerned about "threats to democracy." Particularly, she said, following the recent Jan. 6 Capitol riot hearings, and after the FBI seized classified documents during a raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.
Fox News primetime host Jesse Watters called the Rockville remark Biden's "Deplorables Moment," in reference to how Hillary Clinton similarly said that half of Trump supporters belong in a "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic" "basket of Deplorables." Former George W. Bush deputy chief of staff Karl Rove agreed and said Biden effectively took his Inauguration Day unity pledge and "threw it in the trash can" with those comments.
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Biden also appeared to divide members of his own party following his student loan debt handout announcement, the "Meet the Press" panel mused. Biden decided to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year.
Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan was one Democrat who publicly came out against Biden's plan.
"As someone who's paying off my own family’s student loans, I know the costs of higher education are too high," Ryan said. "And while there's no doubt that a college education should be about opening opportunities, waiving debt for those already on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet."
"Democrats are divided among themselves whether this was a good idea," "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd noted.
"Even Goldman Sachs says that it won't be inflationary, but it's a challenging message for the Democrats to sort of defend right now in front of a lot of people," Alexander said. "Right now working class Americans, who they say they're benefiting here."
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NBC then showed an ad featuring some of those working class Americans who sounded off on the president's plan.
"Biden's right. You should take my tax dollars to pay off your debts," one worker sarcastically said.
