President Joe Biden on Tuesday implicitly rebuked senator Lindsey Graham for predicting “riots in the street” if Donald Trump is ultimately indicted for taking classified documents after leaving the White House.
“No one expects politics to be pattycake,” the president said during a speech at the Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.
“Sometimes it gets mean as hell. But the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying ‘if such and such happens, there’ll be blood in the street’....where the hell are we?” he added in an apparent reference to comments made by Mr Graham on Fox News.
The Republican senator had said earlier this week that if Mr Trump is indicted in connection to a trove of sensitive US government documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort, then there will be “riots in the streets.”
During the speech, the president also elaborated on his $37bn Safer America Plan, saying that a safer country “requires all of us to uphold the rule of law, not the rule of any one party or any one person” as he insisted that “no one should be encouraged to use political violence”.
He spoke about the period when he served as a senator and worked with several Republicans. “I got a lot done. We respected each other,” he said. “When we disagreed, we disagreed on principle, but we then went and had lunch together. Not a joke.”
“What in God’s name has happened to that in the United States of America?” he asked. “So, folks, let’s bring it back. We can do this.”
The president’s stop in Pennsylvania is the first of three visits over the next week, ahead of midterms that will play a key role in determining the Democratic party’s control of Congress.
He will speak in Philadelphia on Thursday and then in Pittsburgh during the annual Labour Day celebration next Monday, reported Politico.
During his speech, he also slammed Republicans for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
“Think about what the world saw. Not what we saw — what the world saw. Did you ever think, in the United States, that would happen?” he said about the mob storming through the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election results.
“What I find even more incredible is the defence of it. Cops attacked and assault — assaulted; speared with flagpole — with flagpoles; sprayed with mace; stomped on, dragged, brutalised. Police lost their lives as a result of that day. Police lost their lives.”
“One of the officers said it was worse than anything he had experienced in war in Iraq,” he said as he demanded Republicans to condemn the Capitol riots.
“So let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th. Don’t tell me. Can’t do it.”
“Look, you’re either on the side of a mob or the side of the police. You can’t be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on January 6th ‘patriots’. You can’t do it. “
