Arkansas Gov. Sanders slams Biden for his ‘woke fantasies’
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, once a White House press secretary for President Donald Trump, is returning to the national stage Tuesday night with a rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address that accuses the president of focusing on “woke fantasies.”
Sanders, 40, is giving the speech Tuesday night less than a month after being sworn in as the first female governor of Arkansas. The daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, she is also the first Arkansan to deliver the response to a president’s State of the Union since Bill Clinton as governor in 1985.
Sanders is using the speech to lean heavily into conservatives’ fights on culture war issues, including how race is taught in public schools.
“In the radical left’s America, Washington taxes you and lights your hardearned money on fire, but you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country,” Sanders said in excerpts of remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday night.
Sanders’ speech is a stark contrast to Biden’s address, which is expected to offer a reassuring assessment of the nation’s condition.
“And while you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day,” Sanders planned to say. “Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight.”
Sanders is also embracing the criticism of technology companies that has become a rallying cry for Republicans after Trump was banned from social media sites following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump has since been reinstated on Twitter and Meta last month said the former president’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be restored.
In her speech, Sanders complains that “big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is — your freedom of speech.”
“That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong,” she says.
With her speech, GOP leaders are giving a platform to a figure linked closely to Trump, who remains influential within the party even as Republicans question how much of a hindrance his quest to return to the White House has become. The star turn for Sanders also puts the spotlight on the nation’s youngest governor at a time when recent polling suggests that even many Democrats view the 80-year-old Biden’s age as a liability.
“I am excited for the nation to hear from Governor Sanders on Tuesday and witness a sharp contrast with this exhausted and failing administration,” Republican Senate leader Mitch Mcconnell said in a statement announcing Sanders’ selection last week.
Republicans have also tapped newly elected Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-ariz., to deliver a Spanish-language rebuttal to the president’s speech. And the progressive Working Families of Party will have another newcomer, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-ill., providing its response in both English and Spanish.
Biden is expected to use his speech before Congress to highlight his efforts to create jobs, fight inflation and improve the nation’s infrastructure.