Joe Biden formally launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia in the spring of 2019, telling supporters that he was running to “repair the soul of the nation.”
On the eve of the traditional fall midterm campaign season, he will return to Philadelphia on Thursday night, less than three miles from where he stood in 2019, to discuss what the White House called “the continuous war for the spirit of the nation.” The address comes at a time when former President Donald Trump is engaged in a high-profile, protracted legal battle on multiple fronts and when dozens of Trump-backed candidates who share his false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen are running for office in swing states where they could one day control the levers of elections.
However, officials privately acknowledge that increased news coverage of the past president helps the current president’s political standing, while publicly insisting the address has nothing to do with Trump.
“This is not a speech concerning the previous president. This is a discourse on American democracy “Thursday morning, a senior administration official gave reporters a preview of the speech. The address will start at 8 p.m. ET.
The president is scheduled to “talk bluntly” about what he perceives to be challenges to democracy, but the senior source would not confirm whether Mr. Biden will reference Trump by name, stating only that the current president has “not been shy about mentioning his predecessor.”
“It is not a response to any current events. It is a response to what he views as a moment in this country… where he feels it is his responsibility to bring to the attention of the American people the fundamental question of what kind of nation we will be and what we must do to address the threat to our democracy that he believes exists right now “The official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the speech in advance with the media, said the following:
The president will deliver the speech in front of a few hundred invited guests outside Independence Hall, according to the White House.
Republicans, eager to capitalize on the president’s low approval ratings and keep the spotlight on themselves, argue that Mr. Biden is breaking campaign promises to unite the country and not disparage opponents. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will argue in a speech Thursday afternoon that the president wants to “discredit hardworking Americans and give no strategy to turn our country around from the mess Democrats have created.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, criticized the president for breaking his Inauguration Day promise to unite the country, citing remarks Vice President Joe Biden made at a Democratic Party event last week, in which he compared an extreme MAGA mindset to semi-fascism.
Rubio stated, “Essentially, they have now erected a barrier where, if you criticize them, they will argue that you are endangering them.” “On the contrary, they do not attack Republicans. They attempt to dehumanize, slander, and tarnish Republicans by labeling Republican supporters as semi-fascists, as opposed to Republican officeholders.”
Rubio said, “When you criticize the FBI, you get all these news reports about unprecedented threats against the FBI.” “You criticize the IRS, and a few days later the IRS claims that it is suddenly being endangered.”
White House sources cautioned that his words on Thursday evening should not be interpreted as an overt political appeal to voters. The address will outline what the president views as threats “not from the Republican party,” but from “MAGA Republicans and the radicalism that is a threat to our democratic values right now,” according to a senior administration official.
The official defined the MAGA agenda as “a movement that does not recognize free and fair elections, a movement that is increasingly advocating violence in response to things they disagree with or do not like, which is not how democracies behave.”
The president frequently discusses how, as a twice-failed presidential candidate and former vice president, he felt compelled to run again for the Oval Office and restore the nation’s soul after the violent 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, led by white supremacists, an event that prompted him to say that there were good people on “both sides” of the violence. And he has often attempted to position his presidency at the frontline of a struggle between autocracies and democracies for global dominance.
In recent weeks, however, the president’s discourse on democracy has become much more partisan and combative, including criticism of remarks made last weekend by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, who asserted that “there will be riots in the streets” if Trump is prosecuted for alleged mishandling of classified documents.
During a rally on Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he asked the audience, “Did any of you believe, if you’re as old as I am, that you’ve ever witnessed an election in which force and political violence were acceptable?” “It is never acceptable. Never.”
This report was compiled by Jack Turman and Kathryn Watson.