Biden Slams Republicans on Kimmel's Show: “This Is a MAGA Party'; 'You've Got to Send Them to Jail'
(CNSNews.com) – Right out of the gate, President Joe Biden slammed Republicans in his appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Wednesday night.
The man who promised to “unite” the country had just taken his seat when host Jimmy Kimmel asked him, “Why haven’t we done anything” about school shootings?
“Well, I think a lot of it’s intimidation by the NRA, and — look, this is not your father’s Republican Party, this is a MAGA party,” Biden said.
“It’s a very different — a very different Republican Party. And so you find people who are worried, I believe, that if they vote for rational gun policy, they’re going to be primaried. They’re going to lose in a hard-right Republican primary.”
Kimmel asked Biden if any Republican lawmakers privately tell him they would like to do something about guns.
“Well, I think — many of them do. You know, I get in trouble for saying this. But I get on — we have very different views on a lot of things.
“But I’ve always had a straight relationship with the majority — with the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. You know, he’s a guy that when he says something, he means it.
“I disagree with a lot of what he says, but he means it. …I mean, look. He’s a leader of a party that’s moved very hard right. And so in order to get anything done, he has a different problem than he did early on, before Trump became president.”
Kimmel said, “It seems like maybe the party has moved hard right, but I don’t know that the people have moved hard right.”
“They haven’t. They haven’t,” Biden said.
Biden took credit for passing the 1994 assault weapons ban, telling Kimmel, I was the guy that sponsored that, got it passed.” Biden wants the ban reinstated, and he urged Kimmel’s audience to make it a voting issue:
“Here’s what has to happen. All of you folks, and I hope — I’m not being facetious when I say this, I hope the Republicans here as well, you’ve got to make sure that this becomes a voting issue.
“It’s got to be one of those issues where you decide your position on the issue, senator, or candidate for House or Senate, on what we’re going to do with assault weapons and maybe it will have 300 rounds in a magazine, and I mean — what you say on those things is going to determine how I’m going to vote for you. It should be one of those issues.”
‘Send them to jail’
Biden wasn’t done insulting Republicans:
Kimmel asked him if he could issue an executive order on gun control: “Trump passed those out like Halloween candy,” Kimmel noted.
“Well, I have issued executive orders, within the power of the presidency to be able to deal with these — everything having to do with guns, gun ownership, whether or not you have to have a waiting — all the things that were in my power.
“What I don’t want to do, and I’m not being facetious, I don’t want to emulate Trump’s abuse of the Constitution and the constitutional authority.
“And so — I mean that sincerely. I often get asked — look, the Republicans don’t play it square, why do you play it square? Well, guess what, if we do the same thing they do, our democracy will literally be in jeopardy. Not a joke.”
Kimmel asked Biden, “how do you ever make any progress if they’re not following the rules?
“You’ve got to send them to jail,” the “no-joke” Biden said (apparently joking.) “There’s that little box.”
“Go directly to jail? I like that,” Kimmel said. “The president is with us, Joseph Biden,” he said, tossing to the first commercial break.
In the second part of the interview, Biden outlined slammed oil companies as profiteers and outlined his plan to reduce costs elsewhere (prescription drugs, child care) to compensate for high gas and food prices.
He wants to pay for the new entitlement programs by raising taxes on the wealthy — people like himself and Kimmel.
“This all makes perfect sense,” Kimmel said. “And the fact that this makes sense is why it doesn’t make sense and why it seems so crazy and that we have so many problems and that — maybe it’s just that Americans aren’t as knowledgeable as they should be, or maybe there’s a death star pumping false information into our brains.”
“Fox, right?” Biden said, slamming the cable network that – unlike MSNBC and CNN — doesn’t reflexively defend him, cover for him, even root for him.
Biden pointed to the impact of the pandemic on people’s mental health: “But the bottom line is, I think, that we’ve seen such a radical shift in one party and the ability of that party to — that minority, the MAGA folks —
“It’s like we’re living in two countries at once,” Kimmel interrupted.
“Yeah,” Biden said.
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