OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a freshman lawmaker from North Carolina and ally of former President Donald Trump, laid into President Joe Biden during a House floor speech on Wednesday, slamming him as an “idiot” and “geriatric despot” who deserves the middle finger.
The Republican lawmaker was especially exercised over Biden’s ordering 3,000 U.S. troops to stage in Europe amid rising tension between Russia and Ukraine, as well as Russia and NATO.
“Madam Speaker, the sons, and daughters of America are not foot soldiers for your party’s inept, geriatric despot. They are not expendable pawns to be dispatched at the whims of an idiot, tossed carelessly around the world to Godforsaken caves and bloody sandboxes. They are Americans, worthy of honor and dignity. The only salute from them Joe Biden deserves involves one finger,” Cawthorn, 26, railed.
The Hill notes further:
Cawthorn is not the first conservative pundit to use the word “geriatric” to describe Biden or accuse him of autocratic rule. Senate hopeful J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, previously tweeted in September that “Joe Biden is a geriatric tyrant” when criticizing the president’s COVID-19 plans.
Cawthorn went on to accuse Biden of using U.S. troops to feed the military-industrial complex.
“Our greatness is forged in our resistance to interference. The war lobby has no ally in the America-first Republicans. We will preserve our strength through nationalism,” he declared.
Cawthorn is not the only Republican freshman taking Biden to task over his deployment of U.S. troops, which administration officials have said is meant to deter President Vladimir Putin from attacking, not start a war.
In a piece published by the Washington Times, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia not only clapped back at Biden, she took aim at establishment Republican consultant Karl Rove for supporting a tougher military stance against the nuclear-armed country:
Karl Rove is, once again, beating the war drums. He is ready to send 18-year-olds like my son to fight nuclear Russia over Ukraine’s border so that he and the other neocons can talk like tough guys on TV. On Jan. 28, Karl Rove shared an article on his Twitter page written by Noah Rothman attacking American populists who are opposed to sending our troops to war with Russia.
My view is that Mr. Rove despises “America First.” He loves war and the global economy that all these wars prop up.
And my direct response to that: Screw Karl Rove.
“Mr. Rove is the architect of the failed Republican strategy that promoted never-ending wars, gave us former President Barack Obama, sold Americans out to China and gave rise to the globalist Uniparty that buried us with $30 trillion in debt. Yet he thinks you and I are the problem,” Greene continued, adding “that could not be further from the truth.”
She went on to rip Biden for wanting to protect the integrity of Ukraine’s borders while doing little to shore up security along the porous U.S.-Mexico border.
“There is a literal invasion of our border under President Biden today. Yet there are currently only 19,000 Border Patrol agents. New York City, meanwhile, has 35,000 police officers. Just put that into perspective,” she wrote.
As for Cawthorn’s jab at Biden’s mental fitness, he certainly is not the first to take that jab.
In November, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that some of Biden’s own family members have questioned the president’s alleged declining mental capacity.
“I know a bunch of members of his family and some a couple of them very well. And I knew for a fact that certain members of the family were very concerned about his cognitive ability,” Carlson told conservative commentator Guy Benson.
“They didn’t expect him to get the nomination. Nobody did. And he got it and they were freaked out about it. That’s…I’m not speculating. I know that for a fact. So I knew that the family believed he was in cognitive decline. So there’s that and that’s news. That’s news,” he added.