Joe Biden sat with actor Kal Penn for an episode of The Daily Show and revealed what he really thinks of the Republican Party, their supporters, and the New Right. Biden suggested that he wants a return to neo-con conservatives he can control.
Biden said that the conservatives who stand up for America, for the nation's working people, for values like protecting children and parental rights, who oppose the radical climate agenda that only focuses on outcomes and not the inequitable means to attain those outcomes, are not individuals who he can work with, and not who he thinks should be leading the opposition party.
Biden prefers conservatives who do what he asks them to do, who agree to his terms, who succumb to pressure and go against the America First priorities like protecting the border, ensuring election integrity, securing the rights of parents in education, and stopping the mutilation of children in the name of "gender-affirming care."
"You obviously understand the existential threat that young people feel when it comes to climate," Penn began, to which Biden responded affirmatively. "How do you balance that with the immediate concerns of babysitting Congress or getting 51 or 60 votes on some of this?"
"Well look," Biden said, in his classic faux folksy way, "I've been relatively—I want to be careful here—relatively successful in working across the aisle. There is a MAGA Republican portion of the party, it makes up about a third of the Republican Party."
"I've had more than a half a dozen Republican senators I've known for years," Biden explained, detailing the lament of the more traditional GOP, those who hew to the DC uniparty and capitulate to Democrat demands as they attempt—and fail— to limit spending and government expansion. "Over the last two years come to me individually, and I promise I'd never mentioned the names and I'll go to my grave never telling their names."
Penn joked that Biden could tell him "later," but Biden didn't think that was funny at all.
"No, I'm not telling. I'm seriously—I've never broken my word. And saying, 'Joe, I agree with you that but if I if I do anything publicly, they're going to primary me and I'll lose," Biden said, explaining that these in the GOP fully back his progressive plans on climate legislation, but are too cowardly to say so publicly. Somehow, Biden thought this would be some kind of selling point for these conservatives who apparently publicly oppose the president while privately agreeing with him.
"The Republican Party has gone through a significant transition," Biden said, though unwilling to mention the man who spearheaded that change and seeks to continue doing so with a 4-year delayed second term.
"And we're going to see, in the next two years, what, how they end up, whether the MAGA Republicans control the party, or we get back to conservative— like, for example, a guy as tough as can be, is the minority leader of the United States Senate, McConnell. But he's straight," Biden praised.
"He's a traditional conservative, he's straight, what he says he does. He probably doesn't want me saying this, probably hurt his reputation. But there's a lot of people in the Republican Party who are traditional Republic, conservative Republicans that you can deal with," Biden said.
"But, you know," he continued, pointing out those who he apparently cannot "deal with," "these, you know, the gentlewoman from the state of Georgia, and the mountains up there, and others, Gaetz, and anyway—"
Penn interrupted, saying that he would have used substantially courser language for Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida's Matt Gaetz, but Biden continued to outline the kind of quiet, meek Republican he prefers to engage with.
"There's an existential question that the Republican Party is going to have to face and it's going to determine what happens in the next couple of years," Biden concluded.
Biden wants the GOP to go back to being the meek, neoconservative, warmongering, bow-tie-wearing, fiscally conservative, socially liberal climate apologists. This is not because he agrees with their values—he doesn't—but he finds conservatives who harken back to the ineffectual days of the good old party more malleable, more pliant, and more able to be manipulated into doing Democrats' bidding.
The question for American First conservatives and their constituents is: do you want to be controlled or do you want to stand for the values that truly represent America and her people?
