Missouri State Attorney General and Senate candidate Eric Schmitt blasted President Joe Biden for his speech in Philadelphia, calling it “divisive,” in a Thursday interview with Lisa Boothe on Boothe’s podcast.
“I think it’s meant to distract from his abysmal record as president,” Schmitt said in the interview, adding he believes Biden was “Look, coming out of the Trump presidency, we had record job growth and wage growth, you had a secure border, you had energy dominance and that has all gone away. And you now have record inflation. You have a struggling economy.”
“So all [Biden] has left is a really an [sic] unprecedented assault by an American president on half of the country. That is essentially categorizing 75 million people as the enemy,” Schmitt continued in the interview.
“He’s like a Sith Lord,” Schmitt added, referring to the imagery of Biden standing in front of a red background with armed marines flanking the podium.
In the introduction to the interview, Boothe compared how Biden’s rhetoric would make Trump voters feel, to attitudes towards Jewish people in the years leading up the Holocaust in Germany. (RELATED: ‘F**k Joe Biden’: Biden’s Speech Interrupted By Heckler)
“I don’t think we’re heading down that path, but it’s always instructive to look at history. You can look at Holocaust survivors like Paul Herzig, and he said that he remembers the precise moment he was made to feel fundamentally different,” she said during the podcast.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – SEPTEMBER 01: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park September 1, 2022 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Biden’s speech in Philadelphia has sparked criticism from individuals who claim the president’s rhetoric stoked division and encouraged partisanship.
CNN anchor Brian Keilar on Friday criticized the optics of the speech for politicizing the military.
“Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it,” Keilar wrote on Twitter.
A majority of Americans say Biden’s speech was a “dangerous escalation in rhetoric,” according to a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll released Tuesday.
Several Democrats praised the speech, saying Biden’s words accurately described the threat posed by supporters of Donald Trump. Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania said on Twitter he was “glad to attend in support” of the president’s speech. Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania representative Ashley Ehasz said Biden “once again reminded us that this midterm election is a part of our ‘battle for the soul of the nation.”