Speaking during an appearance on CNN on the night of Thursday, December 19, in the wake of reports from some of America’s largest papers revealing the administration had been lying about the cognitive health and mental state of the president, Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said the Democratic Party could face a “tea party” movement in response to the lies.
The report in the New York Times revealed: “[Biden] looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day. Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a cease-fire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria’s rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years.” Similarly, a Wall Street Journal article revealed White House aides “insulated” Biden from even his administration’s Cabinet members for most of his presidency.
Roginsky said, commenting on the matter during her CNN appearance, “There is a bigger problem here, and that is that I think Democrats are at the point where Republicans might have been right after the Bush election or after the Bush term was up, which is that I think Democrats are starting to mistrust their institutions.”
She continued, commenting on the lies that led to the Iraq War, “And this goes back to a bipartisan effort to lie us into the Iraq war, not just by George Bush, but also by a lot of Democrats.” She further noted that Obama didn’t really do anything about the ’08 Recession, despite the public being furious about the scandals that led to the Recession.
Making that point about President Obama not doing anything in the wake of the crisis and scandals surrounding it, “It has to do with the fact that Barack Obama did not hold anybody accountable after the 2008 crisis, which also happened on George Bush’s watch, but he became president, he never threw a hostage on the tarmac from Wall Street.”
Building on that, she noted that Bernie Sanders had risen in the wake of that disaster and anger over it, but his side of the party was mostly held off at the time. She said, “You saw the rise of Bernie Sanders as a result of that, and you saw a lot of institutional Democrats, me included, saying, no, no, no, this is not the time. We have to stick with the institution.”
She then noted that things have started to change because trust has been so demolished, saying, “I think you have a lot of Democrats now, me included, who are pretty sick of the institution and trusting people in the institution and this is just one example, the most recent example, I think of people institutionally lying to the American people and what you’re ultimately going to see.”
She also noted, getting to the tea party comment, “And I don’t have a problem saying this as a Democrat, is that you’re going to see a tea party version rise up in the Democratic Party based on the fact that this is yet another marker of people just not trusting our leaders anymore. And I’m sorry to say that, but I think we brought this on ourselves.” Watch her here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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