I’m going to begin with a confession: I didn’t watch much of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Not because I wasn’t excited that not-Trump was officially being sworn into office, it’s just...Look, I was playing video games, OK? Whatever, I follow the news all day for a living.
(I did watch one part of the inauguration in its totality and it left me with one pertinent question for America: Who TF keeps telling Jennifer Lopez she should sing things slowly?)
So, I had to go back and read the transcript of Biden’s inauguration speech to see what the hell Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was talking about when he made an appearance on Fox Snooze to complain all snowflake-ily about how Biden lowkey called all Republicans racists and liars. (Because why would a pro-unity president say such truthful things all truthfully, you know?)
First, let’s start with what Paul said of Biden’s speech.
“If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly-veiled innuendo calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book, calling us people who don’t tell the truth,” he said all die-mad-idly.
Before we get into what horrid things Biden said to warrant Paul’s complaints, I’ve taken the liberty of translating the above quote for our readers who don’t dabble in whiney wypipo linguistics:
“If you read his speech and listen with your butt all hurt, much of it is thinly veiled innuendo calling us the thing we keep demonstrating that we absolutely are, calling us a shorter version of said thing, calling us every name in the book of white nationalism—our second bible after our first bible, the Urban Dictionary, which we consult to figure out the niggra language.” (It’s a pretty loose translation, but I’m sure it’s mostly accurate.)
Paul—who may or may not be Randall from Recess all grown-up—went on to complain all clutch-pearl-ingly about Biden saying that “we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
“That’s another way of saying, ‘all of my opponents manufacture and manipulate the truth and are liars,” Paul said. “He just said it in a nicer way but that really was the gist of what he was telling us.”
Well shit, Paul! How dare Biden (not really) say such things? It’s almost as if Republicans backed Trump in pushing “stop the steal” propaganda despite the rulings of judges in over 60 cases who joined the former head of election cybersecurity and the Department of Justice in finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud. It’s almost like conservatives have routinely claimed, without evidence, that any and everyone who has ever thrown a bottle at a cop car is a card-carrying member of Black Lives Matter and/or antifa.
Here’s the thing, though: After reading the entire transcript of Biden’s speech, I still don’t know what the fuck Paul is talking about.
At least 80 percent of the speech was Biden either preaching unity and an end to divisiveness or talking about fighting the pandemic. Biden also condemned the Capitol riot and made several references to systemic racism, but he did so without naming a single name.
So what is Paul complaining so hit-dog-holler-ingly about? It’s almost like he heard Biden talk about the “rise of political extremism, white supremacy, [and] domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat,” and immediately thought: “OOOOH SHIT, THIS NIGGA TALKING ABOUT MY MOMMA! SQUARE UP!”
In fact, here is Biden’s actual message to Trump supporters:
Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America. The right to dissent, peaceably, the guardrails of our republic, is perhaps this nation’s greatest strength.
Yet hear me clearly: Disagreement must not lead to disunion. And I pledge this to you: I will be a president for all Americans. All Americans. And I promise you I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.
Shit, maybe I’m reading the wrong transcript. Any of you who didn’t spend Inauguration Day getting shot up on Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War should feel free to fill me in on what I’m missing.
Otherwise, I gotta say that Paul is reaching hard and being whiney AF while doing it.