Joe Biden formally announced his race for president in the spring of 2019 in Philadelphia, telling supporters that his main motivation was to “repair the spirit of the country.”
On the eve of the customary autumn midterm campaign season, he spoke on what the White House refers to as “the continued war for the spirit of the country” on Thursday night in Philadelphia, which is just 2.5 miles from where he stood in 2019.
Mr. Biden said, “I want to be very clear up front — not every Republican is a MAGA Republican. “Republicans don’t all subscribe to their radical beliefs.
I am aware of this because I have had the chance to cooperate with these traditional Republicans.”
However, he said that former President Trump and his supporters “intimidate” a sizable portion of the Republican Party.
He added, “I think it’s my obligation to give you the truth, no matter how hard, no matter how terrible it is. “And here is what is true, in my opinion: MAGA Republicans do not uphold the Constitution.
They reject the concept of the rule of law. The people’s will is ignored by them. They refused to accept that the election was fair.”
The speech was made at a time when Trump is engaged in a public, drawn-out legal battle on several fronts and dozens of Trump-backed candidates who share his false belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged are running for office in key states where they could eventually exert significant political influence.
Mr. Biden said, “As your president, I will fight for democracy with all of my might, and I’m asking every American to join me. Later, he urged citizens to cast ballots in the next elections.
Aides have publicly stated that the speech has nothing to do with Trump, despite the fact that they privately acknowledge that more news stories about the previous president benefit the current president’s political position.
“The past president is not the subject of this speech. The topic of this address is American democracy “In a preview of the speech for reporters on Thursday morning, a senior administration official said.
“It doesn’t react to any of the day’s news. It is a response to what he perceives as a critical period for this nation, one in which he feels it is his duty to ask the American people this fundamental question about the nature of our country and what must be done to address the threat to democracy that he believes currently exists “added the official, who was given anonymity by media outlets to discuss the speech’s specifics in advance.
In front of a few hundred invited spectators outside Independence Hall, the president gave the address.
Republicans claim that Mr. Biden is going back on campaign promises to bring the nation together and not disparage opponents in an effort to capitalise on the president’s poor support numbers and keep the spotlight on him.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stated in a speech on Thursday afternoon that the president wants to “dispare with hard-working Americans and give no strategy to turn our country around from the mess Democrats have created.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, blasted remarks made by Vice President Joe Biden at a Democratic Party event last week in which he suggested that “an extreme MAGA mentality” is “like semi-fascism.”
In effect, they’ve now built a wall, and if you criticise them, they’ll say you’re putting their safety in peril, added Rubio. “They don’t attack Republicans, on the other hand.
They attempt to dehumanise, slander, and tarnish Republicans by referring to Republican supporters as semi-fascists rather than Republican officeholders or regular people.”
When you attack the FBI, Rubio said, “you get all these news reports about never-before-seen threats to the FBI.” “You criticise the IRS, and a few days later the IRS claims that it is now under attack,”
White House advisers responded by insisting that his words on Thursday night shouldn’t be seen as an overt political pitch to voters.
The senior source said that the president’s address covered concerns that come “not from the Republican party,” but rather from “MAGA Republicans and the radicalism that is now a threat to our democratic ideals.”
A movement that “does not recognise free and fair elections, a movement that is increasingly talking about violence in reaction to things that they don’t like or agree with, which is not the way democracies function,” was how the official defined the MAGA agenda.
The president frequently discusses how the violent 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, led by white supremacists, an event that prompted Trump to say there were good people “on both sides” of the violent aftermath, made him feel compelled to run for the Oval Office again and restore the nation’s soul.
Additionally, he has often attempted to position his presidency at the head of a conflict between autocracies and democracies for control of the world.
However, in more recent weeks, the president’s discussions about democracy have become much more partisan and abrasive, including his criticism of remarks made last weekend by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, who asserted that there would be riots in the streets if Trump were to face charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
He asked the audience at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, “Did any of you believe if you’re as old as I am, you’ve ever seen an election when we speak about, it’s OK to use force and political violence in America?” “It is never acceptable. Never.”