BLUE BELL, Pa. — President Biden on Friday delivered his first campaign speech of this election year, attempting to define the 2024 presidential race as a battle for the future of American democracy and portray former president Donald Trump as its chief antagonist.
In remarks that cast the future of the country in stark and dire terms — focusing more tightly on his predecessor than perhaps in any other speech in his presidency — Biden framed his campaign in sweeping terms. “Today we’re here to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” he said. “It’s what the 2024 election is all about.”
Biden spoke at a community college about 10 miles from Valley Forge National Historical Park, where George Washington mobilized troops during the Revolutionary War to fight for democracy some 250 years ago. The president’s remarks came on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when a Trump-inspired mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to prevent Biden from taking office despite his clear victory in the 2020 election.
In a speech that stretched some 30 minutes, Biden mentioned Trump’s name at least 44 times, referring to him in the beginning, middle and end — a clear signal that he is pivoting to campaign mode and sees his predecessor as his all-but-certain challenger. “I won the election,” Biden said of 2020. “And he was a loser.”
He said other world leaders have approached him with concerns about the impact of another Trump term and recounted in detail Trump’s encouragement of the Jan. 6 rioters, calling it “among the worst dereliction of duty by a president in American history.” He added, “He still doesn’t understand: You can’t love your country only when you win.”
Biden also took aim at the way Trump is now trying to recast the events of Jan. 6. “Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election,” he said. “We saw it with our own eyes. Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots.”
Biden advisers said the speech was intended as “the opening salvo for this campaign,” depicting events that occurred three centuries ago as well as three years ago to tie Biden’s reelection run to the sweep of American history, while depicting Trump’s comeback bid as a rebellion against that history.
Trump leads the Republican field by a large margin, with rivals like former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trailing less than two weeks before the GOP primary contests begin. While Biden clearly sees Trump as his likely rival, he expanded his attacks beyond his predecessor, saying many Republicans have turned away from their initial condemnations of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
“When the attacks of January 6th happened, there was no doubt about the truth,” Biden said. “But now as time has gone on, politics, fear, money have all intervened. And those MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned our democracy. They’ve made their choice. Now the rest of us — Democrats, Independents, mainstream Republicans — we have to make our choice.”
Trump in recent months has increasingly cast the assault on the Capitol as a heroic action intended to upend an unfair election, a portrait that is not based in reality. He has also sought, without foundation, to blame Biden for the numerous criminal charges Trump now faces, saying Biden is the true threat to democracy.
In a statement ahead of the president’s Valley Forge speech, the Trump campaign called Biden “the true destroyer of democracy,” claiming his remarks Friday were an attempt “to justify his push to imprison his leading political rival and deprive Americans of their right to choose their next president.”
Trump held two campaign stops in Iowa on Friday and plans two more Saturday ahead of the GOP’s first nominating contest Jan. 15. His specific plans for taking public note of the Jan. 6 anniversary, if any, are not clear.
Trump has steadily escalated his defense of the Capitol riot and the people who participated. He has repeatedly suggested he would pardon the rioters if he returns to the White House. Last year he made a recording with some of the most violent accused offenders held in a Washington jail, later playing the recording at the beginning of a rally in Texas.
Trump embraced one convicted rioter who met him after a New Hampshire campaign speech, and he routinely describes riot defendants as “political prisoners” or “hostages.” His legal team has demanded documents related to debunked Jan. 6 conspiracy theories, signaling that Trump plans to make such claims part of his defense against special counsel Jack Smith’s charges that he sought to overturn the 2020 election.
Biden has long cited Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt as inspirations for his values as president. On Friday he added George Washington to that list, describing how the mob that entered the Capitol stormed past a portrait of the first president and citing lessons from a man who willingly gave up power because he thought it best for the country.
“George Washington was at the height of his power, having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth,” Biden said. “He could have held onto that power as long as he wanted … But that wasn’t the America he and the troops at Valley Forge had fought for.”
In lines that seemed directly aimed at Trump, Biden said: “In America, genuine leaders … don’t hold on to power relentlessly. Our leaders return power to the people. They do it willingly, because that’s the deal: You do your duty. You serve your country. And ours is a country worthy of service.”
The speech in some ways was a departure for Biden. The president often concludes public remarks by declaring that he has never been more optimistic about the future of America, but on Friday he delved into some of the darkest chapters of American history and issued a dire warning about the direction the country could take under a second Trump presidency.
The remarks were notable not just for their location and timing — Valley Forge on the eve of Jan. 6 — but also for being the first major campaign event in a reelection effort that the president formally announced nearly nine months ago.
Biden has held numerous fundraisers, hired campaign staffers and opened a reelection headquarters in Wilmington, Del. He attended a union campaign rally shortly after announcing his bid, and he has held plenty of events as a part of his White House duties. But the Biden-Harris campaign has not formally staged a major public campaign event until now, a strategy that aides say reflects a deliberate plan to wait until voters begin tuning in to the 2024 race before expending resources.
While much of the political attention early this year will be on the Republican presidential field, and whether any candidate can gain enough traction to dislodge Trump’s grip on the party, the coming weeks may also provide clues for what kind of campaign the incumbent intends to run.
In addition the speech Friday afternoon, Biden plans to deliver remarks Monday at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were killed in a shooting by a White supremacist in 2015. Like the Valley Forge address, Biden’s remarks at Mother Emanuel are designed to fit his message that the nation faces a “battle for the soul of America.”
The two events could provide insight into whether the Biden campaign can build boisterous crowds for a candidate with notably low approval ratings; the approach his aides will take to combat concerns about Biden’s age; and what messages they hope will resonate with the many voters who are unenthusiastic about a Biden-Trump rematch.
Biden had initially planned to give the Valley Forge remarks on Saturday — the actual anniversary of the Capitol assault — but his campaign moved the speech a day earlier because of inclement weather forecast for the Philadelphia area.
Before the speech, Biden toured the Valley Forge historic site, several miles from where he delivered his speech Montgomery County Community College. The stage included several large American flags and white columns, and Biden spoke to an auditorium full of elected officials, supporters and campaign staffers.
“I’m glad to see the president going on offense today to talk about democracy, to talk about real freedom, and to talk about the fact that Donald Trump puts all of that at risk,” Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) told reporters. “I’m glad that he is offensive-minded about it.”
By his own account, Biden’s 2020 campaign was launched in response to the scene in 2017 of White nationalists marching in Charlottesville, and Trump’s reluctance to condemn them. A counterprotester was killed during the rally. But for much of his presidency Biden has been consumed by other issues, from the Ukraine war to climate legislation.
In recent weeks — as a likely rematch with Trump loomed larger — the Biden campaign has taken a more forceful approach to the former president, including by highlighting Trump’s rhetoric calling his adversaries “vermin,” language that scholars say is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.
On Wednesday the president met at the White House with a group of scholars and historians to talk about ongoing threats to democracy and democratic institutions. His campaign on Saturday is launching a week-long ad campaign with $500,000 worth of televised ads that will run on national networks and local news programs in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The campaign features a 60-second spot called “Cause,” which starts with solemn music over images of average Americans going to vote. “I believe in free and fair elections and the right to vote fairly and have your vote counted,” Biden says in the ad.
Then images of the Jan. 6 assault appear as the president continues: “There’s something dangerous happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.” As the music turns more upbeat, he adds, “All of us are being asked right now: What will we do to maintain our democracy? History is watching.”
The president’s recent rhetoric showcases the lengths Biden’s campaign is going to center the campaign on an argument that American democracy might not survive another Trump presidency.
This comes after the campaign has found limited success with other messages. Biden’s efforts to tout the unusually robust economy, for example, have not always resonated with voters, and he often struggles to talk passionately about abortion rights, an issue that animates many Democratic voters.
Vice President Harris is also being deployed in a more visible way by the Biden team. She heads to Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Saturday, and later this month she will launch a “reproductive freedoms tour” in Wisconsin to mark the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
January 05, 2024 at 08:00PM
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiU2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9wb2xpdGljcy8yMDI0LzAxLzA1L2JpZGVuLXRydW1wLXRocmVhdC10by1kZW1vY3JhY3kv0gEA?oc=5
Biden, in Valley Forge speech, hits Trump hard as threat to democracy - The Washington Post
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment