Mitch McConnell calls Biden's speech 'incoherent' and 'beneath his office'

(CNN)Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Joe Biden's speech pushing for the Senate to change its filibuster rules to pass voting and elections legislation, saying Biden compared "a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors."

"How profoundly — profoundly — unpresidential," McConnell said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "I've known, liked and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday."

McConnell said Biden's speech was a "rant," "incoherent," "incorrect," "beneath his office," and "unbecoming of a President of the United States."

Biden in Georgia on Tuesday equated supporters of Senate rule changes to civil rights icons and opponents to segregationists and a leader of the Confederacy.

"At consequential moments in history, they present a choice," said Biden in his speech. "Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"

McConnell said that Biden's speech is further proof of why the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, should stand.

"You could not invent a better advertisement for the legislative filibuster than what we've just seen, a President abandoning rational persuasion for pure, pure, demagoguery," McConnell said. "A president shouting that 52 senators and millions of Americans are racist unless he gets whatever he wants is proving exactly why the framers built the Senate to check his power."