When President Donald Trump gave his prime-time speech this week, you knew that the left was going to bash it for every silly reason they could think of, no matter how ridiculous it made them look.
And ABC’s Jonathan Karl proved just how silly one could look when one is desperate to attack Trump.
On Thursday morning’s edition of Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos set the tone immediately, declaring, “This is not the typical presidential speech that merits primetime attention.”
From there, Jonathan Karl stepped in to explain why this speech supposedly broke all historical norms.
“Look, George, when the president of the United States asks for primetime network airtime to address the nation, it is usually either to make a statement about a national crisis, to announce a major new initiative, or to speak on an issue of war and peace. This was none of that,” Karl said. He then delivered the most patently absurd line possible: “In fact, I cannot recall a prime time presidential address that was as defensive and hyper-partisan as this one.”
What fake news from ABC’s Jonathan Karl about never having heard “a primetime presidential address that was as defensive and hyperpartisan as” Trump’s last night…
George Stephanopoulos: “[T]his is not the typical Presidential speech that merits primetime attention.”
Jonathan… pic.twitter.com/5prIHgJoF8
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 18, 2025
Really? He couldn’t recall a single primetime presidential address more partisan? Not one?
Does Sept. 1, 2022, ring a bell? Has he really forgotten Joe Biden’s “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall? Because I haven’t. None of us has. Who could forget the speech, staged with red lighting and a militaristic backdrop, in which he repeatedly framed Trump supporters as a threat to the nation. That address ran just over twenty minutes and was explicitly political in tone and purpose. Yet somehow it escaped Karl’s memory.
That speech was easily the most chillingly partisan presidential moment in modern U.S. history, and it hit like a warning shot at anyone who dared to oppose him. Standing at Independence Hall, drenched in ominous red light with Marines behind him, Biden cast “MAGA Republicans” not as fellow citizens to debate, but as a “clear and present danger” to the country that had to be stopped.
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Biden took mainstream conservative beliefs on life, marriage, and culture and folded them into a narrative of dangerous extremism. If you fell into that category — and if you’re reading this, you probably do — the implication was obvious: You were a threat to democracy, and indeed the nation.
By framing millions of ordinary voters as enemies of the republic, Biden was laying rhetorical groundwork for justifying extremes, extra-constitutional measures against Trump and those who support him in the name of “defending democracy.”
Many people were, of course, horrified by the speech, with many seeing parallels between Biden’s rhetoric and the anti-Jewish rhetoric of a 1930s Nazi rally.
In his Wednesday address to the nation, President Trump defended his policies and explained why they were delivering results. Three years earlier, Joe Biden stood before the country and smeared Trump and his supporters as enemies of the state. What else did Biden do? He weaponized the federal government against Donald Trump, literally trying to put him in prison to prevent him from returning to the White House.
Yet Karl couldn’t remember a more partisan speech than Trump’s? Hogwash.
The real assault on honest discourse comes from journalists who deliberately erase the past and then dare the public to forget it along with them. That is exactly what Karl was doing.
Karl’s bizarre claim raises an obvious question: Is the media trying to memory-hole Biden’s fascistic Independence Hall speech? No serious observer can honestly claim Trump’s remarks were more partisan than Biden’s, yet that fiction is now being pushed as if the Biden speech never happened at all.
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