OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Biden administration spent an outsized amount of time ‘researching’ the phrase ‘Ultra MAGA,’ which is meant to be insulting to former President Donald Trump and his supporters, according to a Saturday report.
The Washington Post reported that last week that President Joe Biden coined the new phrase during a speech, adding that the president and his advisers spent six months on a research project to rebrand Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” as an insult to his supporters and Republicans in general by adding the term “ultra.”
But the term has since been reappropriated by conservatives and the former president’s supporters as a term of endearment, essentially rendering the phrase moot in terms of political capital for Democrats.
The Post report added: “Biden’s attempt to appropriate the ‘MAGA’ brand as a political attack was hardly accidental. It arose from a six-month research project to find the best way to target Republicans, helmed by Biden adviser Anita Dunn and by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal group.”‘
Newsmax notes further:
After conducting polling from the Hart Research and the Global Strategy Group, strategists said they found “MAGA” as a term that held negative connotations among voters — more so than “Trump Republicans.”
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked how a President who ran on a campaign as a unifier of both parties could insult members of the very party he was trying to unify into a bipartisan coalition, she responded, “The president’s view is you can do both.” She qualified her response by saying that Biden would still seek to work with Republicans who share his priorities, but what spotlight those he saw as promoting destructive policies or behavior.
“He’s also not going to stand by and not call out what he sees as ultra MAGA behavior, ultra MAGA policies that are out of the mainstream of the country and are not in the interest of the American people,” Psaki said.
But of course, not everyone agrees with the former press secretary.
Cliff Sims, a former senior official under Trump, said that attempting to reappropriate a slogan that has mass appeal to the former president’s grassroots base is a tone-deaf attempt to one-up Trump that will fail miserably.
“It’s stunning how out-of-touch Biden and his folks are about how to brand this stuff when they’re taking the most iconic, successful political slogan of all time and trying to turn it into something derogatory,” Sims said.
“I mean, who doesn’t want to make America great again?”
“You can’t fake grassroots support, and there is a real ecosystem of Trump supporters,” he went on to say. “Part of the power of the online movement for Trump is they’re just having a great time, they’re making fun of people, they’re trolling, they’re creating funny memes to get a laugh or get retweets.”
That is not to say there wasn’t some initial shock value to Biden’s use of the phrase.
Earlier this month, he turned heads when he proclaimed the “MAGA crowd” to be part of “the most extreme political movement” in the country’s history.
“Now, what happens if you have states changing the law, saying that … children who are LGBT, who can’t be in classrooms with other children, is that is that legit under the way that the decision is written?” Biden asked during a press conference in response to a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade — though it’s not clear what he was referencing because no states are currently considering such a law, which would very clearly be unconstitutional.
“What are the next things that are going to be attacked?” he asked. “Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history—-in recent American history.”
For his part, Trump has embraced the ‘insult.’ He told Fox News the remark was “very divisive” and intimated that the political movement he essentially founded had a profoundly positive effect on the country.
“MAGA is saving America,” Trump said. “Our country is going to hell. MAGA is saving America.”
“Inflation, incompetent withdrawals from Afghanistan, leaving hostages horribly wounded, soldiers, $85 billion of military equipment – MAGA is saving America,” Trump continued, adding that he thinks the U.S. is “no longer respected throughout the world.”
