Displaying its usual class and patriotism, the Republican Party used the President’s Day holiday to issue a dig at Democratic President Joe Biden with a petty graphic that mocks the President.
The graphic extended a wish for a Happy Presidents’ Day to eight former “great” Republican presidents whose pictures surrounded a photo of Biden in a mask. Above Biden were the words “NOT YOU,” excluding him from the list of supposedly honorable leaders.
The graphic is as notable for the Republican presidents it does and does not include as for its slight against Biden. For one, it includes Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a president who is almost never acknowledged by Republicans in any way.
Eisenhower was among the most progressive Republicans to ever hold the office, especially when it came to taxation, with rates on wealthy individuals and corporations that were actually higher than the ones that sent Republicans into a tizzy when proposed by Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a few years ago.
The GOP’s tweet also lauded President Ronald Reagan, infamous for ignoring the AIDS crisis for years; Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace after being impeached for the Watergate Scandal; George W. Bush, regarded by many as a war criminal; and Calvin Coolidge, whose economic policy resulted in the Great Depression.
And, of course, the GOP’s roster included Donald Trump. We probably don’t need to remind you what a disaster he was.
Missing from the GOP’s roster, however, were Republican Presidents often lionized as heroes, like Ulysses S. Grant, who defeated the Confederacy in the Civil War and presided over the Reconstruction; and Teddy Roosevelt, whose policies championed the working class that the current Republican Party claims to represent.
Roll it all together and the tweet seems like an embarrassingly craven attempt at adulating the worst of right-wing tendencies and obscuring anything that would offend the MAGA crowd, while disrespecting the office of the presidency they claim to love so much by trolling the sitting president.
