President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address drew in a reported 23 million viewers on Tuesday night. Americans who tuned in got a chance to hear directly from the president about the work he and his administration have done and his vision for the future.
But while Biden’s address was mostly optimistic and unifying, it also highlighted the widening hostile divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Throughout the president’s speech, some Republican members of Congress heckled and booed him and, at times, Biden paused to engage them.
Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison, who was a guest at the address, told theGrio that the behavior of Republicans was “embarrassing” to the nation.
“Three-year-olds are on better behavior than some of the members of Congress. It was just disparaging to the honor and the dignity of the House of Representatives,” said Harrison. “That is not why people go to the polls and send them there to Washington, D.C. to represent them.”
During his speech, Biden sought to compare and contrast his economic plan to that of some Republicans. But when he asserted that some Republicans have proposed terminating Social Security and Medicare as a plan to reduce the national deficit (and as a bargaining tool to raise the debt limit), some GOP lawmakers quickly heckled him — most notably Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who yelled “liar!”
“I enjoy conversion,” quipped Biden, appearing to get Republicans to publicly state for the record that they will not seek to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. According to a Gallup poll, Americans overwhelmingly reject such cuts.
Harrison said the exchange between Biden and Republicans created a moment of political strength for the president. “You could see very much that while they were playing tic-tac-toe, the president of the United States was playing chess. I mean, he set a…
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