‘You Can’t Love Your Country Only When You Win’

• In a speech on Thursday, Biden delivered a rare rebuke of MAGA Republicans.
• Biden said democracy cannot survive when one side believes the only outcome of elections is winning.
• “You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said.

President Joe Biden on Thursday called out the MAGA world for only respecting free and fair democratic elections when they win them.  

During a prime-time speech, he spoke about the “battle for the soul of the nation” and slammed “MAGA Republicans” for fanning the “flames of political violence.”

In his speech, Biden called upon Americans to reject political violence and not allow the integrity of the country’s elections to be undermined.

While he acknowledged that politics in a “big, complicated country” like America could be “fierce and mean and nasty,” he said that democracy would endure only if its people “accept the results of free and fair elections.”

“Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today,” said Biden.

“They don’t understand what every patriotic American knows: You can’t love your country only when you win,” he added. 

Biden also vowed to not allow election results to be “overturned by wild conspiracy theories and baseless, evidence-free claims of fraud.” “I will not stand by and watch elections in this country stolen by people who simply refuse to accept that they lost,” he added.

Ever since Trump’s refusal to concede the election in 2020, claims of voter fraud by lawmakers have become commonplace — even in the GOP’s primaries.

In June, Trump’s PAC baselessly suggested that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s 52-point victory in the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary only happened because of election fraud. In August, Laura Loomer, a far-right GOP candidate in Florida, also melted down and baselessly alleged voter fraud after losing her race.

Earlier in his speech, Biden also commented on how former President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represented “extremism” in the country. Trump has continued to tout baseless claims of election fraud, despite there being no evidence that widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.