MSNBC presidential historian Michael Beschloss dropped by Thursday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports to preview President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address and to warn that “we could be a dictatorship next year,” which means that Biden is akin to FDR warning about the Nazis and the Japanese prior to World War II.
Mitchell asked Beschloss to “take a big picture, zoom out for us on what's at stake for him tonight. You point to FDR’s Four Freedoms speech in 1941, obviously war time, a bigger challenge, but let's, you know, talk about the challenges tonight.”
Beschloss declared that “this is a real historical moment” and warned, “We could be a dictatorship next year if Donald Trump is elected and carries through on his threats and carries through on his threats to suspend the Constitution. That's what's at stake.”
He implored Biden not to “talk about other things,” but to:
Confront the elephant in the room and say, you know, ‘This is a year when we Americans have to choose whether we're going to live as a democracy, as a republic, or as an authoritarian system.’ That's what FDR was doing in 1941, Nazis, fascists, Imperial Japanese were rampaging around the world, and he said ‘you Americans have to choose and also, for you Americans who think that we need to be fascist at home to compete with other fascist governments,’ which a lot of people were saying, he said we need these four freedoms. Freedom from want and fear, freedom of speech and religion.
Switching topics, Mitchell then turned to USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page and declared, “I want to talk to both of you about something we haven't seen, I don't think anything this brutal since Lee Atwater back in 1988 with his campaign ad, which is that new super PAC ad and it's all over the place, actually suggesting Joe Biden will not survive another term and also really demeaning the vice president.”
Really? Nothing that bad since 1988, what about when an Obama PAC blamed Mitt Romney for someone’s wife dying of cancer? As for the part about Kamala Harris, the ad simply shows her laughing in an unflattering manner side-by-side a video of Biden tripping on the steps of Air Force One.
Page only briefly addressed the ad, “We've never seen, routinely, this kind of brutality in political ads, that sort of attack, but brace yourself, because I think we're going to see a lot of it this year.”
On one hand, Mitchell is upset about an ad that suggests Biden may die in office, but on the other, her other guest claims that Trump will “suspend the Constitution.”
Here is a transcript for the March 7 show:
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
3/7/2024
12:55 PM
ANDREA MITCHELL: And Michael, take a big picture, zoom out for us on what's at stake for him tonight. You point to FDR’s Four Freedoms speech in 1941, obviously war time, a bigger challenge, but let's, you know, talk about the challenges tonight.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, this is a real historical moment. We could be a dictatorship next year if Donald Trump is elected and carries through on his threats and carries through on his threats to suspend the Constitution. That's what's at stake. So Joe Biden could finesse it and talk about other things or he could confront the elephant in the room and say, you know, "this is a year when we Americans have to choose whether we're going to live as a democracy, as a republic, or as an authoritarian system."
That's what FDR was doing in 1941, Nazis, fascists, Imperial Japanese were rampaging around the world, and he said "you Americans have to choose and also, for you Americans who think that we need to be fascist at home to compete with other fascist governments," which a lot of people were saying, he said we need these four freedoms. Freedom from want and fear, freedom of speech and religion.
MITCHELL: And Susan, I want to talk to both of you about something we haven't seen, I don't think anything this brutal since Lee Atwater back in 1988 with his campaign ad, which is that new super PAC ad and it's all over the place, actually suggesting Joe Biden will not survive another term and also really demeaning the vice president. Susan, you first.
SUSAN PAGE: We've never seen, routinely, this kind of brutality in political ads, that sort of attack, but brace yourself, because I think we're going to see a lot of it this year. I think it's no holds barred, and I'll be interested in the kind of reception that President Biden is given tonight in the House chamber. There was a long tradition of a respectful audience. That has not been the case in some previous recent years, and I'll be curious about what kind of -- what happens tonight. We'll be watching that. It did provide Biden with one of his good moments at the last State of the Union when he made a retort when Marjorie Taylor Greene called him a liar and he took that as a commitment to Social Security and Medicare, but you know, this is likely to be, I think, Andrea, a brutal campaign year.
