President Joe Biden delivered his first major election year campaign speech on Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden lambasted his predecessor and potential 2024 rival Donald Trump in a forceful addredss, emphasizing the former president’s refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 as a continued threat to American democracy.
“Today we are here to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” Biden told a crowd of supporters. “This isn’t rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time.”
“It is what the 2024 election is all about,” he added.
The president did not mince words regarding the former president’s efforts to undermine the democratic process following his 2020 election loss. “Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election,” he said. “Every one. But the legal path just took Trump back to the truth: that I had won the election and he was a loser. Well, knowing how his mind works now, he had one act left. One desperate act available to him: the violence of Jan. 6.”
Biden’s speech comes a day before the three-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol. Trump is holding campaign rallies in Iowa on Friday and Saturday, where he is likely to continue praising the rioters who stormed Congress on his behalf. Biden emphasized Trump’s role in the deadly insurrection.
“Three years ago tomorrow we saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol. … Jill [Biden] and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day. And because of Donald Trump’s lies, they died, because these lies brought a mob to Washington.” Biden added, laying the blame for the lives lost as a result of Jan. 6 directly at Trump’s feet. He also skewered his predecessor for hiding in the White House while the mob he riled up assaulted the Capitol.
“As America was attacked from within, Donald Trump watched on TV in the private small dining room off the oval office,” Biden said. “The entire nation watched in horror, the whole world watched in disbelief, and Trump did nothing … It was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history. An attempt to overturn a free and fair election by force and violence.”
The former president is currently dealing with multiple criminal cases related to his role in effort to undermine the results of the 2020 election. He hasn’t abandoned his claims that the election was rigged against him — or accusations that his rivals will do it again. Shortly before beginning his tour in Iowa, Trump’s campaign mailed out campaign ads accusing Florida governor and fellow Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis of “trying to rig the Iowa Caucus.”
As Trump and Biden duel for the limelight and brace for their nearly inevitable rematch in November, Biden made clear on Friday that the 2024 election will be about preserving democracy. “The choice is clear,” Biden said, “Donald Trump’s campaign is about him. Not America. Not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power. ”
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