ABC Analyst Who Blamed Trump 'Rhetoric' for Violence Praises Biden for Threatening Assault
This Tuesday’s suite of primaries, dubbed Super Tuesday II by a media that loves hype and dreads originality, was a sequel that played a lot like the original. Joe Biden won four out of six states, with two of those wins by massive margins.
He lost in delegate-starved North Dakota and is ahead by a slight margin in Washington’s primary, where votes are still being counted; even if he loses, the race will be close enough that the delegate difference will be minimal.
Theoretically then, Biden should be living his best live now. However, on election day in Michigan, Biden got himself into a bit of a media kerfuffle when he threatened a worker who confronted him about guns and the Second Amendment during Biden’s pro forma visit to a Detroit auto plant.
In the exchange, Biden threatened to take the man “outside” and said he was “full of s—” and a “horse’s a–,” in addition to mentioning something about “AR-14s.” That kind of exchange doesn’t exactly make for a — hold on, let me put my sunglasses on here — super Tuesday.
Warning: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive. Viewer discretion is advised.
WATCH: “You’re full of sh*t,” @JoeBiden tells a man who accused him of “actively trying to end our Second Amendment right.”
“I support the Second Amendment,” Biden adds while vising under-construction auto plant in Detroit. @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/sueOSBaY9P
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) March 10, 2020
Thankfully, two things happened. One, the exchange occurred on an election day in the middle of a pandemic, both of which saturated the news cycle. Second, when the clip was brought up, there were people willing to stand up for Biden threatening a voter because it showed unorthodox grit.
One of them was ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd, a man who intimated Donald Trump’s “rhetoric” played a part in the Poway synagogue shooting back in 2019, which left one person dead and three injured at the southern California house of worship.
According to NewsBusters, Dowd appeared during ABC’s election night coverage to analyze, among other things, the showdown at the Detroit auto plant. Dowd thought it was good for Biden.
“When I saw that moment, I thought, ‘this is going to be a net plus for Joe Biden,'” Dowd said.
“I’ve been through so many campaigns with so many candidates that have had moments like that and everybody thinks, ‘Oh, my gosh, what just happened?’ In this environment, at this time, for Joe Biden, that’s going to be a net plus in this.”
And why is that, Mr. Dowd?
“One of the things we learned through the Donald Trump election is, voters are sick of the typical political speak, the typical way where you phrase everything perfectly and say it just right and speak in paragraphs and do all of that the way that we’ve gotten used to these sort of manufactured candidates that have everything put down perfectly well,” he said.
“Voters want somebody that they can trust and is genuine and has a believability. And that moment to me, taking on this on an issue that’s important to most Americans, which is guns, where a majority of the country supports where Joe Biden is on this issue was a moment that will be capture. The Democratic Party will love it and independent voters who question whether Joe Biden has the strength to take on Donald Trump are going to see that in him. So I think net plus.”
Dowd had a different take about this kind of rhetoric after the Poway synagogue shooting in April of 2019, which left one dead.
As Scott Whitlock noted over at NewsBusters, Dowd said in April that Trump should “look in the mirror and understand that the rhetoric, the words he uses in all of this inflame a big part of what’s going on in America, give permission to the most craziest people in America.”
At what point Dowd became convinced that inflamed rhetoric doesn’t cause violence is unclear.
He seems to be a total convert, however, since what Biden said to the worker at the auto plant — it sounds like he said, at one point, “Don’t tell me that, pal, or I’m going to go out and slap you in the face” — is actual violence threatened against a voter who confronted him on the issues.
That’s quite a bit further than Trump has taken things.
Trump’s “rhetoric” has done nothing to the fabric of our society that over 200 years of politics hasn’t done already.
We live in a country where, in 1856, pro-slavery Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina used his metal-topped cane to beat anti-slavery Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts into unconsciousness in the Senate chamber.
I doubt a slap-fight with a Second Amendment advocate would exactly qualify as a Preston Brooks moment, particularly given the fact the Secret Service are known to intervene before affrays involving the former vice president and an auto worker take place.
This is exactly what Biden was threatening, however.
As “rhetoric” goes, I don’t see any way this is a “net plus.”
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