You expect Joe Biden to be a radical, partisan figure. After all, he may be a doddering old man, but his politics have never been in doubt. Even still, sometimes he does something that is so gross that you just have to pause and note the brazenness he exhibits, knowing all the while the media will still proclaim him a great unifier.

One of the statement’s from Biden’s address to Congress has been released (that speech should be starting right as this is published), and it’s so far beyond the pale for a president that it would make Woodrow Wilson blush.

Biden to refer to Jan 6 insurrection as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” in speech tonight. pic.twitter.com/rW6L2ybDRQ

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 28, 2021

Calling the unrest on January 6th the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War is gaslighting at a level rarely seen in politics, and there’s a lot of gaslighting that goes on in politics. Worse, it deliberately downplays major atrocities that have targeted our nation. Pearl Harbor was an attack on our democracy. Thousands of people died and it involved a powerful foreign adversary attempting to defeat our entire way of life. 9/11 was also an attack on democracy. In fact, part of the plan was to blow up the White House and the Capitol.

On no planet does January 6th come close to those events. Even via the most sensational description one can come up with, January 6th was an event where unarmed people trespassed at the Capitol and no one was killed except for Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer. Everyone else who died that day died of natural causes.

Heck, you don’t even have to talk about 9/11 or Pearl Harbor to make this point. We’ve literally had presidents assassinated before. How is that not a worse attack on our government than some clown taking a selfie at Nancy Pelosi’s desk?

To claim January 6th is worse than planes flying into the World Trade Center, Flight 93, presidents being assassinated, or Japanese bombers scuttling a U.S. Naval base is absolutely asinine. Any person who would do that deserves scorn, and as I’m writing this, Biden is receiving plenty of it on social media.

What happened on January 6th was a disgraceful episode by people who crossed the line. I think most people agree with that to varying degrees. But that does not give Biden or anyone else the right to pretend it was the “worst attack” since the Civil War when it clearly wasn’t. Even tortured qualifiers like “democracy” in his statement don’t save his point. We’ve had far worse attacks on our democracy throughout our history. Heck, we’ve had our own government attack our democracy in worse ways via corruption and the attacking of rights.

Those who have died in past attacks on this country deserve respect. What Biden is doing here isn’t respectful. It’s spitting in the faces of the dead just to be divisive for political gain. I can’t think of something more disgusting for a politician to do than that.