President Biden has governed with little or no compromise on border security and social issues such as abortion and transgender rights. Yet the content and tone of his roughly 73-minute address surprised even critics.
"Attacking his opponent directly in the first minutes of his speech is unprecedented and perhaps the most partisan start to a State of the Union address in modern memory," AEI senior fellow and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen wrote on X.
Thiessen isn't alone in his critical assessment. Appearing on American Family Radio Friday morning, Dinesh D'Souza described the SOTU as "a very bitter, angry partisan" speech.
"The State of the Union isn't supposed to be that; it's not a campaign speech. Yet Biden was raging against the Right," the author and filmmaker told show host Jenna Ellis. "Even if you look at the media coverage of the speech, they were kind of focusing on the applause of the Democratic side. But if you panned over to the Republican side, the reaction was completely different. Biden, while claiming to try and heal polarization and bring the country together, he's obviously doing the exact opposite."
Even some Democrats pointed out Biden avoided the realities of the border crisis he has created with his lax immigration policies. Joaquin Castro, a House member from Texas, called out Biden, be it ever so softly and not without taking a jab at Donald Trump along the way.
"There was a lot of good in President Biden's speech tonight, but his rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong … close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the back of Latinos everywhere," Castro stated. "Democrats shouldn't be taking our cues from MAGA extremism."
Biden's belligerence deserved stronger bite from Britt
While that was rare criticism from Biden's own party, D'Souza argued the Republicans need to be better at criticism with clarity. In fact, many in the GOP were critical of one of their own: Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, who delivered the Republican response to the speech.
"I'm sure Kaite Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need," TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk wrote on X. "Joe Biden just declared war on the American Right, and Katie Britt is talking like she's hosting a cooking show whispering about how Democrats 'don't get it.'"
Britt (right), 42, was elected in 2022 as the youngest Republican woman to gain a seat in the Senate. She delivered the address in what appeared to be the kitchen in her home, the likely goal to connect with suburban moms.
"I think Katie Britt, in her response to Biden, took a very homey kind of a homespun type of approach, which was endearing in a way but not appropriate to the extreme belligerence and partisanship of the Biden address," D'Souza said.
In fact, messaging from the GOP overall, not just Britt, is lacking right now, he contended.
"We're not doing a good enough job to lay out the full case against Biden," D'Souza continued. "True, the media is on the other side, but very often there needs to be, I think, a more systematic, just pointing out, this is what Biden says. This is what the reality is. So, I'm not saying none of that is happening, but I don't think enough of that is happening."
D'Souza to GOP: Tell the Texas story
D'Souza's son-in-law, Brandon Gill, won the GOP primary for the Texas District 26 U.S. House seat Tuesday night. D'Souza used Texas, his home state, as an example of how reality could use a dose of Republican marketing.
"I live in Texas, and frankly, I would have predicted that the overturning of Roe v. Wade might create more social upheaval and convulsions than there actually have been. And I say that only because Roe was essentially embedded in law all the way back to 1973.
"So, whenever you have something that's been going on for 50 years, and then it changes, it's going to cause some upheaval. I mean, think of the upheaval caused, for example, by the civil rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s.
"The level of normalcy in Texas has been incredible to see. Now this is not to say that women in Texas can't get abortions. You just can't get them in Texas; you've got to go someplace else, but that's the will of the Texas voters. So, what we have is democracy in action," he said.
The Texas story, he argued, needs to be told from the Republican perspective. "The problem on the Republican side is that we're not doing a good enough job to lay out the full case against Biden," D'Souza said.
Who do you believe?
He suggested voters need to be reminded that the America presented by Biden in Thursday night's speech isn't the America that voters see every day.
"It's like living in a neighborhood and you're terrified [because] there are serial killers running around, crime rates are epidemic, and somebody tells you, 'You're having an illusion. You're actually extremely safe. You don't even have to lock your door.'
"So, who do you believe?" he asked. "Do you believe the rhetoric – or do you believe the actual experiences around you?
"I think if people go with their experience, they will realize that we're getting an unprecedented degree of outright lying – not just from Biden but also from a supportive media," he concluded.
