Biden makes impassioned argument Trump could destroy American democracy as he opens 2024 campaign

The value Americans place on democracy is the “most urgent question of our time,” President Joe Biden said during a speech kicking off his 2024 campaign in Pennsylvania on the eve of the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol – where he launched an impassioned political attack on his likely opponent Donald Trump that painted a sharp distinction between how the nation’s first and 45th presidents ended their terms.

“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,” Biden said.

The backdrop of Biden’s speech near Valley Forge, where George Washington rallied an undersupplied and demoralized Continental Army at the height of the American Revolution, gave the president the opportunity to contrast Washington, who would eventually set the precedent of relinquishing presidential power in the face of an adoring new nation, with Trump, who went to extraordinary lengths to maintain his grip on power, encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol as he refused to accept the result of the 2020 election.

That message could rally a base that has been souring on Biden over his handling of various foreign and domestic crises, including the Israel-Hamas war and the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border.

Polling has shown that while Biden is not a popular leader, democracy itself is a central issue for Americans ahead of November.

A majority of Americans, including 72% of Democrats, think the outcome of the 2024 election will be extremely or very important for the future of democracy in the United States, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month, ranking the issue behind only the economy.

Biden’s campaign has sought to has sought to jolt the memories of Americans who at a removal of three years, may view his predecessor’s term with rose-tinted glasses — of the chaotic end to Trump’s presidency. Friday’s speech comes one day before the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.

That day, Biden said on Friday, “we nearly lost America.”

The insurrection was a focus of the Biden campaign’s first 2024 campaign ad.

“There’s something dangerous happening in America,” Biden says in the ad, interspersed with images from the 2018 Unite the Right rally of white supremacists; images of Trump supporters battling police officers on January 6; and images of a noose set up outside the Capitol. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.”

“All of us are being asked right now: ‘What will we do to maintain our democracy?’” Biden says in the ad, adding that “our children and grandchildren will hold us responsible.”

In small, more intimate settings, Biden has all but conceded that he is running only to defeat Trump, telling supporters at a fundraiser last month that he’s not sure he would be running again if Trump weren’t seeking a second term.

Trump, meanwhile, hasn’t been shy about his intention to seek retribution against his political opponents if he again wins the presidency, with recent messaging – saying he would be a dictator on Day 1 and vowing to “root out … radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” – reminiscent of history’s most infamous authoritarians.

Trump is scheduled to hold two events in Iowa later Friday afternoon. In a post to Truth Social, he said Biden, whom he called a “moron,” was the real threat to democracy.