'Let them keep firing at each other': Senate GOPer says Trump benefits from Dems’ infighting

10 July 2024

One Senate Republican recently offered his candid take on how Democrats' current squabbling over President Joe Biden's viability as a presidential candidate os helping his party.

During an appearance on far-right network Newsmax's "Wake Up America," Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) – who was an obstetrician before his political career — spoke at length about the 81 year-old Biden's health. Marshall pointed to the now-debunked New York Times report about a neurologist visiting the White House on eight occasions over an eight-month period (with most of those visits happening when Biden was not present at the White House) to back up his opinion that the 46th president of the United States had Parkinson's Disease.

However, toward the end of the interview, the Kansas Republican made another frank observation about how the ongoing infighting within the Democratic Party was helpful to Republicans' goals of electing former President Donald Trump and flipping control of the U.S. Senate.

"Listen, the plot keeps getting thicker. The Democrats have formed a circular firing squad at the Capitol, it's been interesting to watch," Marshall told host Rob Finnerty. "And it's important that Republicans just stay out of the way, let them keep firing at each other, keep their heads down, let's get Donald Trump re-elected, lets get a [Republican] Senate majority, let's do what we can do."

Biden has been dogged by weeks of negative press coverage since his flat debate performance against Trump in late June. Even though Trump lied more than 30 times during the debate and rarely answered moderators' questions, his ramblings were overshadowed by Biden's verbal slip-ups and visible fatigue. While Biden has chalked up his flat performance to a lingering cold and jet lag from international travel, several Democrats have called on him to step aside and allow Vice President Kamala Harris or another candidate to be the 2024 Democratic nominee.

Marshall's comment is similar to a remark an unnamed Trump ally made to CNN in the week after the debate, who said that Trump's plan is to lay low, and that "chaos is our friend." To underscore the effectiveness of that strategy, Rolling Stone pointed out that despite Trump referencing the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory on his Truth Social platform and calling for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) to be prosecuted for "treason" by a military tribunal, news coverage in the "week from hell" following the debate was mostly focused on Biden. Trump was even caught on a hot mic using profanity to describe the vice president, though the story went largely unnoticed.

""She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s just so f—ing bad," Trump said of Harris.

In the week after the New York Times published its editorial calling on Biden to end his 2024 campaign, the paper has published almost 200 stories critical of Biden, according to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. To contrast, the Times only published six stories about the ominous Project 2025 initiative laying out the far right's plans for a second Trump term.

On the social media network Bluesky – which is increasingly becoming the preferred platform by left-leaning journalists and academics who left Twitter after billionaire Elon Musk turned it into X — user Comfortably Numb posted a screenshot of their attempt to search the Times' website for "Trump." Their results instead showed stories critical of Biden and other top Democrats.

Watch the video of Marshall's remarks below, or by clicking this link.

From Your Site Articles