Trump campaign hits Biden on economy ahead of president’s democracy address

The Trump campaign rolled out a new ad ripping President Biden’s economic record Friday, as Biden is set to deliver a major address warning former President Trump poses a grave threat to democracy.

The ad, titled “History Lesson,” cites differences in gas prices, mortgage rates and retirement savings under Trump compared to during Biden’s presidency, making the case the former president has a stronger economic record.

“Everywhere you look, Trump beats Biden on the economy,” the ad states.

The campaign also cited polling from The Wall Street Journal in December that found 53 percent of voters believe Biden’s economic policies hurt their situation.

“Later today, Crooked Joe Biden … will mumble his way through a tired, old speech filled with Crooked Joe’s political grievances,” the Trump campaign said in a release. “Biden refuses to talk about the unfairness of his disastrous, failed ‘Bidenomics’ policies — which have handed Americans sky-high interest rates, record-high inflation, doubled gas prices, falling wages, and crashing investments — but we will.”

The ad was released hours after the December jobs report showed the U.S. added 216,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.7 percent, beating expectations from economists and giving further fodder to the White House to argue its economic plan is working.

The Trump campaign ad also dropped hours before Biden was scheduled to deliver remarks in Pennsylvania focusing on the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, when Trump supporters violently clashed with law enforcement and stormed the complex to try to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.

In his speech, Biden will make the case that Jan. 6 underscores the fragility of American democracy and that Trump cannot be trusted with a second term in the White House.

“When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said, ‘We’re in a battle for the soul of America.’ And as we look toward November 2024, we still are,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since. … Our message is clear and it is simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does.”