Tonight, Thursday, March 7th, is the State of the Union Address so lets keep everything related to it (including the Republican response) confined to this thread.
This is probably one of the most important speeches Biden can give this year. He has to come across as “Present”, not just “President”.
This will set the tone for the campaign the rest of the year and will be second only to the Democratic Convention speech in August for visibility.
Watch it live here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2024/
Or through your favorite news source.
The Republican response will be delivered by Senator Katie Britt of Alabama:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1236338784/katie-britt-alabama-republican-biden-state-of-the-union
Very good speech!
Full transcript is here:
https://time.com/6898705/read-president-joe-bidens-2024-state-of-the-union-address-full-transcript/
Republican response from Katie Britt here:
I encourage you to watch the video and not just read the transcript. Reading it doesn’t carry just how breathless and borderline weepy her delivery is.
Holy crap this rebuttal is just… Bad. Especially given what it’s following.
And fundamentally false… She’s attacking Biden on the border, when she herself helped write the border bill and VOTED IT DOWN because Trump told her to.
Also the optics are especially bad after he literally just called them out on that. “Pretty sure you guys can read right?” Or whatever he said was classic.
Classic and brutal:
"I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him.
It’s not about him or me.
It’d be a winner for America!
My Republican friends you owe it to the American people to get this bill done.
We need to act.
And if my predecessor is watching instead of playing politics and pressuring members of Congress to block this bill, join me in telling Congress to pass it!
We can do it together. But here’s what I will not do.
I will not demonize immigrants saying they “poison the blood of our country” as he said in his own words.
I will not separate families.
I will not ban people from America because of their faith.
Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more.
Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans.
We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new.
Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years. Home to people from every place on Earth.
Some came freely.
Some chained by force.
Some when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland.
Some to flee persecution.
Some to chase dreams that are impossible anywhere but here in America.
That’s America, where we all come from somewhere, but we are all Americans.
We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it.
Send me the border bill now!"