Focusing heavily on the threat he says former U.S. President Donald Trump poses to American democracy, U.S. President Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign by pledging to make the defense of the country's democratic system the central theme of his 2024 race and potential second term.
"Democracy is still a sacred cause, and there's no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than America," Biden declared in a Friday speech at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a site with historical significance in America's war for independence against the British.
Launching the sharpest attacks yet on Trump, his likely rival in the November presidential election, Biden chose the third anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol to deliver his first campaign speech of 2024. The event was originally scheduled for Saturday but moved up because of weather concerns.
Thousands of supporters of Trump stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, seeking to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's electoral victory. According to the FBI, 1,240 people have been charged with crimes related to their participation in the violence, including 452 on charges of assaulting law enforcement officers. More than 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted.
Trump calls the people involved in the riot "patriots" and those serving their prison sentences "hostages" and has promised to pardon them if he is reelected.
New phase of Biden campaign
Taking jab after jab at Trump, Biden's address marks a new phase of his campaign that emphasizes Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
"Trump won't do what an American president must do. He refuses to denounce political violence," Biden said. "So hear me clearly, I'll say what Donald Trump won't – political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States' political system."
"You can't be pro-insurrectionists and pro-America," Biden underscored, warning that Trump's assault on democracy will continue if he is reelected. "Trump's assault on democracy isn't just part of his past. It's what he's promising for the future. He's been straightforward. He's not hiding the ball."
Mike Sozan, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive lobbying group, said that Biden sees himself as a leader who saved American democracy in 2020 and aims to do so again.
"He believes that he was uniquely positioned to beat Donald Trump and that he continues to be positioned that way," Sozan told VOA.
Focusing on Trump's threat to democracy could be key to persuading voters to support him. Biden faces consistently dismal poll numbers, ending 2023 with 39% favorability, the lowest approval rating of the past seven presidents at the same point in their first term in office.
The Trump campaign dismissed Biden's speech.
"The remarks today simply demonstrate that Biden will stop at nothing to distract from the fact that he has the worst inflation in U.S. history, that he has put us on the brink of World War III, and that he has allowed the Southern border to utterly collapse under his leadership over the past three years," said Lynne Patton, senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
"The American people are smart," she told VOA. "They're not going to fall for it."
Historical resonance
From 1777 to 1778, Valley Forge was the headquarters of George Washington's Continental Army. There, the soldiers persevered in the winter amid illness and a food shortage in their fight for independence against the British during the American Revolutionary War.
The Americans defeated the British, and in 1789, Washington became the first U.S. president.
"George Washington was at the height of his power having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth," Biden said on Friday. "He could have held onto that power as long as he wanted. But that wasn't the America he and the American troops of Valley Forge had fought for."
After two terms as president, Washington voluntarily stepped down.
"In America, our leaders don't hold on to power relentlessly," Biden continued, drawing a stark contrast between Washington and Trump. "We speak of possibilities – not carnage. We're not weighed down by grievance. We don't foster fear. We don't walk around as victims."
Trump highlighted American carnage in his 2017 inauguration speech and in 2023 declared to his supporters, "I am your retribution," signaling that he would seek revenge on his political enemies if he wins again.
As Biden delivered his speech, the Trump campaign posted on social media a blow-by-blow account of how it says Biden and "the radical Left Democrats" are the greatest threat to democracy the country has ever faced.
"Since Joe Biden took office, the Democrat Party has relentlessly weaponized the legal system against Pres. Trump, their chief political opponent," one of the posts said.
Trump faces 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions, including attempts to overturn the 2020 election under indictments at the federal level and at the state level in Georgia. He denies wrongdoing in all of them and leads by a wide margin among Republican primary candidates as he aims to take back the White House that he says Biden stole from him in the 2020 election.
In a 2022 interview, Trump said that the "weaponization" of the Department of Justice he says Biden employs against him "could certainly happen in reverse," signaling that he would use the federal government to go after and indict political opponents.
'There are real stakes'
There are objective reasons to be concerned about the trajectory of American democracy, said William Howell, Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago and author of "Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy."
"In important respects, the choices that voters make in November of this year will bear upon the independence and well-functioning of the administrative state, the extent to which elections are upheld and the outcome of elections are recognized, whether or not the Justice Department is used to prosecute enemies," he told VOA.
"There are real stakes involved, and they need to be brought into stark relief, and I think Biden's trying to do that early on as part of his campaign," Howell said.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that Trump can not appear on the state's Republican primary ballot because he had engaged in insurrection. Maine has also found the former president ineligible to hold office because of his actions after the 2020 election and barred him from the primary election ballot in the state. Trump has also appealed that ruling.
Trump is kicking off the 2024 election year on Friday with two rallies in Iowa.
