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View video of Huckabee-Sanders’ full response to the State of the Union 2023 address.
By Miriam Raftery
February 8, 2023 (Washington D.C.) The Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech was delivered by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former press secretary under former President Donald Trump.
Huckabee-Sanders, the youngest Governor in the nation, noted that Biden, a Democrat, is the oldest U.S. president at age 80. She stated, “It’s time for a new generation of Republican leadership.”
Despite Biden’s record of job growth and a strengthening economy, Huckabee-Sanders claimed Bidens and Democrats have failed voters.
She faulted Biden for inflation, which has dropped but not to below pre-pandemic levels, and for border security, though Republicans have blocked funding for enhanced border protection tied to reforms in the treatment of asylum seekers.
She accused Biden of being “the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob” and criticized stances on transgender rights and culture war issues.
Her reference to a mob struck some observers as ironic, given that it was Trump who faces a criminal investigation for inciting an actual violent mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, killing several people and injuring dozens of police officers.
Republican legislators in the audience who interrupted the President’s speech with jeers and boos, in the most open display of rudeness seen at any State of the Union speech in modern times. Despite this, Huckabee-Sanders stated, “The dividing line in America is no longer between right and left — it's between normal or crazy.’
Huckabee-Sanders did not define how she envisions a new generation of Republican leadership to be, or whether that would encompass more of the far-right-wing, Q-Anon and conspiracy theorists who have become an increasingly vocal force in the Republican party.
She suggested that what she views as craziness is fomented by Democrats on culture war issues and more. She wants to see the U.S. follow her actions as Governor to ban critical race theory, the truthful teaching of history that includes actions that negatively impacted minorities, such as slavery and institutionalist racism.
Democrats and moderate votes, by contrast, have used the term “crazy” to describe growing number of extremist office holders among Republicans in Congress, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene praising political violence and claiming that California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers, or the serial lies told by Congressman George Santos over his education, job history, false claims of Holocaust family ties and more.
Huckabee-Sanders concluded that Biden is “unfit to serve as commander in chief,” despite the fact that her own former boss, Donald Trump, who has declared his intent to run in 2024 against Biden, is deemed as unfit by a lion’s share of voters.
Trump was twice impeached; his company was found guilty of tax fraud, and the former President is now the target of multiple criminal investigations including over his role in the Capitol armed insurrection and his efforts to pressure Georgia election officials to falsely report that he won the 2020 election.
Some have speculated that Huckabee-Sanders may be vying to announce her own candidacy for the presidency in a field of potential contenders that could include not only former President Trump, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, and others.
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