Biden slams Trump for Capitol riot in 2024 campaign speech
In his initial campaign address of 2024, President Joe Biden portrayed his presumed electoral adversary, Donald Trump, as a significant threat to American democracy.
“The most pressing question of our time is whether democracy still remains America’s sacred cause,” remarked Mr. Biden, emphasizing that this theme encapsulates the essence of the upcoming 2024 election.
In response, Mr. Trump dismissed the speech as “pathetic fear-mongering” and labeled Mr. Biden as a peril to democracy during a rally in Iowa.
At the heart of the speech was a recurring theme that Mr. Biden has consistently emphasized in recent years. This time, he explicitly linked the events of January 6, 2021, when supporters of Mr. Trump violently breached the US Capitol, to underscore his argument.
On that tumultuous day, Trump’s supporters stormed Congress, aiming to thwart the certification of the presidential election results in favor of Mr. Biden, just weeks before his scheduled inauguration.
Mr Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, frequently repeats the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The former president has also attempted to reframe the 6 January attack as a “beautiful day.” He has referred to the individuals who participated as “patriots” and political prisoners and vowed to pardon them if he returns to the White House.
Taking direct aim at this rhetoric, Mr. Biden accused Mr. Trump of trying to “steal history”, attacking his rival by name repeatedly.
“Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest, it was a violent assault,” Mr Biden said. “They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They were not there to uphold the Constitution, they were there to destroy the Constitution.”
“He calls those who oppose his vermin. He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same language used in Nazi Germany,” Mr Biden said.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller wrote on X that Mr Biden “has given up on running an issues-based campaign for 2024”.
“Rather than help those suffering from Bidenomics or our porous southern border, Biden plans on weaponizing government against his leading political opponent,” Mr. Miller wrote.
Mr Biden has returned to the theme of preserving democracy again and again.
In 2020, he campaigned as the candidate capable of restoring America to normalcy. Before the 2022 midterms, Mr. Biden described that election as a “battle for the soul of this nation”.
On Friday the venue in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a key site in the American Revolutionary War, was chosen to underscore the themes of Mr Biden’s address.
Even the music contributed to the atmosphere: as Mr Biden strode to the podium, a song from Hamilton, a musical about the Founding Fathers, played over the loudspeakers.
After a year of failing to improve Mr Biden’s standing in the polls by highlighting his economic agenda, his re-election campaign has re-focused on democracy, highlighting the stark differences between him and Mr Trump.
The strategy has been effective for Mr Biden before.
Democrats exceeded expectations in the 2022 midterms by hammering controversial, pro-Trump Republican opponents who questioned the legitimacy of US elections.
The issue “has incredible resonance with the Democratic base,” said Ashley Etienne, a former Biden 2020 senior campaign adviser.
“There’s nothing more foundational to who we are than democracy,” Ms Etienne said. “But it is a winning strategy. It’s a winning message. And it’s facilitated this vast coalition of voters.”
Mr Biden’s Democratic allies seemed pleased with his decision to focus on democratic values.
“I’m glad to see the president going on the offense today to talk about democracy, to talk about freedom, and to talk about the fact that Trump puts all of that at risk,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, told reporters.
Recent polling has shown that three years later, Americans’ views of the 6 January attack are starkly divided along partisan lines, with Republicans now less likely to believe it was a violent attack. About a quarter of Americans believe a conspiracy theory that the FBI, not Mr Trump’s supporters, instigated the riot, a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found.
