Joe Biden again launched a grim and solemn warning on Thursday about the fate of American democracy, this time attacking Donald Trump very directly, while the campaign for the 2024 presidential election has just taken on a new dimension, AFP comments.
Joe Biden Photo: Jacek Boczarski / AFP / Profimedia
He stated that the ideology of his Republican opponent and his partisans “threatens the very essence of our nation”, notes Agerpres.
“Democracies do not necessarily die by force of arms. They can die when people are silent, when people do not mobilize or when they do not condemn attacks against democracy. When people are willing to abandon what is most precious because they are struggling with frustration, disillusionment, fatigue, with a sense of exclusion,” said the Democratic president.
For this speech, the fourth according to the White House that he dedicates to the theme of democracy, Joe Biden went to Arizona, the electoral fiefdom of former Republican senator John McCain.
The 80-year-old Democrat, a candidate for a second term, was linked to the former war hero through a friendship that transcended partisan divisions, a symbol, in his opinion, of the values threatened by Republican Donald Trump.
A clear favorite in the Republican primaries, the former president is accused by the judiciary of playing a role in the assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021 and of trying to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Biden pronounced his opponent’s name
In his speech, Joe Biden pronounced the name of his opponent, a rare fact, and several times took over fragments of Trump’s speeches to denounce them.
“Trump says that the Constitution gave him, I quote, the right to do what he wants as president,” the democrat said, denouncing a “dangerous notion”, also attacking the spread of “conspiracy theories” by his opponent and his desire to divide the country.
He appreciated that his predecessor “wasn’t guided by the Constitution, by the sense of duty or by respect for his compatriots, but by revenge and grudge”.
Joe Biden also quoted this sentence uttered by Donald Trump in March before a conference of the Republican Party: “I will avenge you”.
“There is no doubt that the Republican Party today is run (…) by Trumpists,” said Joe Biden, in this speech that coincided with the first day of an impeachment inquiry led against him by Republican lawmakers.
Biden, outraged by the attitude of the Republicans
The president was particularly outraged by the “deafening silence” of Republicans after Donald Trump’s “hateful” remarks against the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley.
The Republican businessman suggested that the latter was guilty of treason and indicated that such an act could be punishable by death.
“The more people vote, the more the whole nation gets involved, the stronger the democracy will be,” added Joe Biden, who has so far struggled to generate enthusiasm in the polls, mainly because of his age.
In Tempe, the US president was questioned by a voter who criticized him for not declaring a “climate emergency”. Joe Biden promised to meet with him after his speech if he agreed to be quiet and went on to say: “Democracy is never easy, we just had the demonstration” of this.
Joe Biden has made defending America’s “soul” a major axis of his duel against Donald Trump in 2020, so he plans to campaign on the same theme before the 2024 presidential election.
The electoral battle, at a new level
The electoral battle between the two took on a new dimension this week, when they visited, one after the other, the Detroit region (north), the cradle of the American auto industry.
As the major UAW union launched an unprecedented strike against three major automakers, Joe Biden participated in a picket line outside a General Motors factory, unprecedented for an American president.
Donald Trump visited a small non-union factory.
Each aims to seduce the popular electorate, and especially the white working class, whose vote could be decisive in 2024, writes AFP.
