President Biden on Friday gave his first major general election speech — one that delivered a furious attack on his likely GOP opponent, former President Trump, and a stark warning that Trump’s reelection would post a threat to American democracy.
Biden, speaking near Valley Forge, Pa., a significant symbol of the American Revolution, zeroed in on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to drive home his argument that Trump and his Republican supporters have embraced the kind of extremism that was on display that day three years ago.
“Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot,” Biden said in a roughly 30-minute address that took place a day before the third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol.
The speech was notable for its focus on Trump, and the personal edge that came across. It included insults — Biden called Trump a “loser” at one point — and underscored what Biden sees as the stakes in a rematch with the former president in November.
“Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice democracy to put himself in power,” Biden said.
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He said that Trump lost the popular vote by 7 million votes, and that his claims about “the 2020 election never could stand up in court.” He referred to rioters as “Trump’s mob” who were there to do the then-president’s “dirty work.”
“The legal path just took Trump back to the truth. That I’d won the election and he was a loser,” Biden said.
“Trump lost 60 court cases — 60. Trump lost the Republican-controlled states, Trump lost before a Trump-appointed judge and then judges. And Trump lost before the United States Supreme Court. All of them. He lost. Trump lost recount after recount after recount and state after state,” he said.
He also bashed Trump for his rhetoric during his rallies and in previous speeches, saying Trump has an “admiration” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He hit Trump for joking about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, in October 2022.
“He talks about an intruder, whipped up by the big Trump lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull, echoing the very same words used on Jan. 6, ‘Where’s Nancy?’ And he thinks that’s funny, he laughed about it. What a sick–,” Biden said, stopping himself. “I think it’s despicable, seriously, not just for a president, for any person to say.”
While polls have suggested that a sizable number of voters are not eager for a Trump-Biden rematch, it looks like that is what the country will get.
Trump, 77, is far-and-away the front-runner for the GOP nomination with just more than a week to go before the Iowa caucuses, and Biden, 81, does not face meaningful Democratic opposition.
Trump is ahead in polls against Biden, something that has worried Democrats and won attention from the media. Trump holds a 1-point lead over Biden in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s aggregate of national polls.
The former president is leading his primary rivals by an average of 52 percentage points in national polls, according to Decision Desk HQ, and while state level polls are closer, Trump still leads.
Friday’s speech, which was originally scheduled for Saturday but was moved because of a forecasted storm, marked Biden’s first major campaign address for 2024, as he turned his focus to the general election.
The president’s address was filled with imagery of Jan. 6, when throngs of Trump supporters violently clashed with law enforcement and stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. Biden directly connected Trump’s rhetoric after the 2020 election with the violence of that day.
Biden noted that the “MAGA crowd chanted, ‘Hang Mike Pence’” and “hunted for Speaker Pelosi inside, saying ‘Where’s Nancy?’”
Biden invoked at the top of his speech President George Washington while in Valley Forge, saying Washington called his army’s mission “a sacred cause.” Before his remarks, he visited Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge and observed a wreath laying ceremony at the National Memorial Arch, a monument to Washington and his army.
While polling has shown voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, immigration and other issues, the president and his team are hoping to make November’s vote a referendum on Trump and his disregard for U.S. institutions.
Biden’s campaign has in recent weeks highlighted Trump’s pledge to be a dictator only on his first day in office, his rhetoric that echoes Adolf Hitler, his calls to investigate his political opponents and Trump’s vow to his supporters that he will be their “retribution.”
“Trump’s assault on democracy is’t just part of his past, it’s what he’s promising with the future. He’s being straightforward. He’s not hiding the ball,” Biden said Friday.
The Trump campaign has in recent weeks sought to flip the argument against Biden, suggesting the current president is a threat to democracy.
That argument largely rests on the idea that Biden’s Justice Department has indicted Trump on charges in Florida and Washington, D.C., over his handling of classified material and his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, respectively. But there is no evidence Biden was directly involved in the decision to bring charges against his predecessor.
The remarks were Biden’s fifth major speech focused on democracy; his first was in January 2022, marking the first anniversary of Jan. 6.
Earlier this week, Biden’s reelection campaign dropped a 60-second ad, which is set to run over the next week in key swing states, arguing Trump has made efforts to “erode American democracy and excuse — and even promote — political violence.”