Biden, in Valley Forge speech, hits Trump hard as threat to democracy
Biden spoke at a community college about 10 miles from Valley Forge National Historical Park, where George Washington mobilized troops during the Revolutionary War to fight for democracy some 250 years ago. The president’s remarks came on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when a Trump-inspired mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to prevent Biden from taking office despite his clear victory in the 2020 election.
In a speech that stretched some 30 minutes, Biden mentioned Trump’s name at least 44 times, referring to him in the beginning, middle and end — a clear signal that he is pivoting to campaign mode and sees his predecessor as his all-but-certain challenger. “I won the election,” Biden said of 2020. “And he was a loser.”
He said other world leaders have approached him with concerns about the impact of another Trump term, and he recounted in detail Trump’s encouragement of the Jan. 6 rioters, calling it “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.” He added, “He still doesn’t understand a basic truth, and that is you can’t love your country only when you win.”
He also asked voters to step up to support democracy. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is, ‘Who are we?’”
Biden spent considerable time describing details of what occurred three years ago — calling Jan. 6 a day “that we nearly lost America” — and took aim at the way Trump is now attempting to recast the events of that day. “Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election,” he said. “We saw it with our own eyes. Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots.”
Biden advisers said the speech was intended as “the opening salvo for this campaign,” depicting events that occurred three centuries ago as well as three years ago to tie Biden’s reelection run to the sweep of American history, while depicting Trump’s comeback bid as a rebellion against that history.
Trump leads the Republican field by a large margin, with rivals such as former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trailing less than two weeks before the GOP primary contests begin. While Biden clearly sees Trump as his likely rival, he expanded his attacks beyond his predecessor, saying many Republicans have turned away from their initial condemnations of the 2021 assault on the Capitol.
“When the attack on January 6th happened, there was no doubt about the truth,” Biden said. “As time has gone on, politics, fear, money — all have intervened. And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy. They made their choice. Now the rest of us — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we have to make our choice.”
Trump in recent months has increasingly cast the assault on the Capitol as a heroic action intended to upend an unfair election, a portrait that is not based in reality. He has also sought, without foundation, to blame Biden for the numerous criminal charges Trump now faces, saying the current president is the true threat to democracy.
In a speech on Friday evening in Sioux Center, Iowa, Trump called Biden’s earlier speech a “pathetic, fearmongering campaign event.” Referencing a speaking impediment Biden had as a child, Trump said incorrectly that Biden “was stuttering through the whole thing.”
“He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said. “‘He’s a threat to d-d-democracy.’ Couldn’t read the word.”
Later in the speech, Trump expressed sympathy for Jan. 6 rioters, calling their imprisonment “one of the saddest things in the history of our country.”
“It’s the biggest crowd I believe I ever spoke to,” Trump said. “You never hear about that, do you? You have the hostages, the J6 hostages I call them, nobody has been treated ever in history so badly as those people.”
At one point in the speech, Trump joked about the use of the word “insurrection,” as he asked the crowd if there was anybody who did not plan to vote for him. “Don’t raise your hand, it could be dangerous stuff,” he said. “They’re going to say ‘he incited an insurrection,’ these stupid bastards.”
Trump describes riot defendants as “political prisoners” or “hostages.” His legal team has demanded documents related to debunked Jan. 6 theories, signaling that Trump plans to make such claims part of his defense against special counsel Jack Smith’s charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Biden has long cited Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt as inspirations for his values as president. On Friday he added George Washington to that list, describing how the mob that entered the Capitol stormed past a portrait of the first president and citing lessons from a man who willingly gave up power because he thought it best for the country.
“George Washington was at the height of his power, having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth,” Biden said. “He could have held on to power as long as he wanted. … But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops at Valley Forge had fought for.”
In lines that seemed directly aimed at Trump, Biden said: “In America, genuine leaders … don’t hold on to power relentlessly. Our leaders return power to the people. And they do it willingly, because that’s the deal: You do your duty. You serve your country. And ours is a country worthy of service.”
The speech in some ways was a departure for Biden. The president often concludes public remarks by declaring that he has never been more optimistic about the future of America, but on Friday he delved into some of the darkest chapters of U.S. history and issued a dire warning about the direction the country could take under a second Trump presidency.
The remarks were notable not just for their location and timing — Valley Forge on the eve of Jan. 6 — but also for being the first major campaign event in a reelection effort that the president formally announced nearly nine months ago.
Biden has held numerous fundraisers, hired campaign staffers and opened a reelection headquarters in Wilmington, Del. He attended a union campaign rally shortly after announcing his bid, and he has held plenty of events as part of his White House duties. But the Biden-Harris campaign had not formally staged a major public campaign event until now, a strategy that aides say reflects a deliberate plan to wait until voters begin tuning in to the 2024 race before expending resources.
While much of the political attention early this year will be on the Republican presidential field and whether any candidate can gain enough traction to dislodge Trump’s grip on the party, the coming weeks may also provide clues about what kind of campaign the incumbent intends to run.
In addition to the speech Friday afternoon, Biden plans to deliver remarks Monday at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were killed in a shooting by a white supremacist in 2015. Like the Valley Forge address, Biden’s remarks at Mother Emanuel are designed to fit his message that the nation faces a “battle for the soul of America.”
The two events could provide insight into whether the Biden campaign can build boisterous crowds for a candidate with notably low approval ratings; the approach his aides will take to combat concerns about Biden’s age; and what messages they hope will resonate with the many voters who are unenthusiastic about a Biden-Trump rematch.
Biden had initially planned to give the Valley Forge remarks Saturday — the actual anniversary of the Capitol assault — but his campaign moved the speech a day earlier because of inclement weather forecast for the Philadelphia area.
Before the speech, Biden toured the Valley Forge historic site, several miles from where he spoke at Montgomery County Community College. The stage included several large American flags and white columns, and Biden addressed an auditorium full of elected officials, supporters and campaign staffers.
“I’m glad to see the president going on offense today to talk about democracy, to talk about real freedom and to talk about the fact that Donald Trump puts all of that at risk,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) told reporters. “I’m glad that he is offensive-minded about it.”
By his own account, Biden’s 2020 campaign was launched in response to the scene in 2017 of white nationalists marching in Charlottesville and Trump’s reluctance to condemn them. A counterprotester was killed during that rally. But for much of his presidency Biden has been consumed by other issues, from the Ukraine war to climate legislation.
In recent weeks — as a likely rematch with Trump has loomed larger — the Biden campaign has taken a more forceful approach to the former president, including by highlighting Trump’s rhetoric calling his adversaries “vermin,” language that scholars say is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.
On Wednesday, the president met at the White House with a group of scholars and historians to talk about ongoing threats to democracy and democratic institutions. On Saturday, his campaign is launching a week-long ad campaign with $500,000 worth of televised spots that will run on national networks and local news programs in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The campaign features a 60-second spot called “Cause,” which starts with solemn music over images of average Americans going to vote. “I believe in free and fair elections and the right to vote fairly and have your vote counted,” Biden says in the ad.
Then images of the Jan. 6 assault appear as the president continues: “There’s something dangerous happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.” As the music turns more upbeat, he adds, “All of us are being asked right now: What will we do to maintain our democracy? History is watching.”
The president’s recent rhetoric showcases the lengths Biden’s campaign is going to center the campaign on an argument that American democracy might not survive another Trump presidency.
This comes after the campaign has found limited success with other messages. Biden’s efforts to tout the unusually robust economy, for example, have not always resonated with voters, and he often struggles to talk passionately about abortion rights, an issue that animates many Democratic voters.
Vice President Harris is also being deployed in a more visible way by the Biden team. She heads to Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Saturday, and later this month she will launch a “reproductive freedoms tour” in Wisconsin to mark the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Isaac Arnsdorf in Washington and Marianne LeVine in Mason City, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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Trump tries reappropriating "insurrection" on Jan 6 anniversary
“He’s now directly saying that violence and criminality is okay if it’s in service of my power,” said Michael K. Miller, a political science professor at George Washington University who studies democracy and autocratic elections. “Once you endorse violence in rejecting electoral outcomes, you’ve turned away from democracy, it’s really that simple. Having a large fraction of the population with that attitude is very dangerous.”
Speaking at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, on Saturday, Trump referred to people detained while awaiting arraignment, trial or sentencing as “J6 hostages” and called their treatment “a horrible thing.”
Later Saturday, in Clinton, Iowa, he called on President Biden to release those who were detained. “You know what they ought to do?” Trump said. “They ought to release the J6 hostages. They’ve suffered enough. I call them hostages. Some people call them prisoners. I call them hostages. Release the J6 hostages, Joe. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”
The former president on Saturday repeated the false claim that served as the stated basis of the efforts he and his allies waged to overturn the 2020 election, saying “it was a rigged.” Allegations focused on Trump’s actions in the aftermath of the election are at the center of some of the criminal charges he is facing in court.
He also called the U.S. House committee that investigated the attack “fake” and lashed out at its two Republican members, former representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). He also lashed out at Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted to convict Trump in both impeachments.
More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the breach of the Capitol three years ago. The Washington Post-UMD poll found that a majority of Americans believe the events of Jan. 6 were an attack on democracy and should never be forgotten.
But Trump has increasingly identified with the Jan. 6 defendants as he faces his own criminal jeopardy in four separate cases, including two involving his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He has pledged to immediately pardon many Jan. 6 defendants if he returns to the White House. Last year, he recorded a song with some of the most violent accused offenders held in the D.C. jail and played it to open the first rally of his presidential campaign.
Biden’s reelection campaign is seeking to portray Trump as extreme and dangerous. In a speech Friday, he called him an ongoing threat to democracy, and an opening ad used footage of the Jan. 6 riot. Trump has responded by accusing Biden of distracting from his own presidential record. He has also tried to turn the criticism around, calling Biden a threat to democracy.
Trump went further in social media posts over the holidays, calling Biden an “insurrectionist” in response to a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to remove Trump from the primary ballot under a provision of the 14th Amendment disqualifying officeholders who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to review that decision in February.
On Saturday, Trump returned to the theme, concluding an extended broadside against undocumented immigration by saying, “When you talk about insurrection, what they’re doing, that’s the real deal.”
It’s the latest term that Trump has attempted to reappropriate and spin against his critics. In late 2016 and early 2017, Trump co-opted the term “fake news” — which meant hoax stories designed to monetize viral online traffic — to a catchall swipe at coverage he dislikes.
“He’s a master at undercutting and taking the zing out of phrases and terms that are used against him,” said Susan Stokes, director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago. Stokes said Trump also undercuts criticism by making it into a joke, such as when he answered concerns last month that he would govern as a dictator by saying “Except for Day 1.”
In Clinton on Saturday, Trump recounted that exchange with Fox News host Sean Hannity, repeating, “I’m going to be a dictator for one day.”
In another example of that technique on Friday, Trump asked attendees at the rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, to raise their hands if they were not going to vote for him. Then he added: “No, don’t raise your hand, it could be dangerous. They’re going to say, ‘He incited an insurrection,’ these stupid bast----. ‘He incited an insurrection.’”The audience laughed.
In that speech, Trump also repeated baseless conspiracy theories blaming the violence on outside agitators or undercover agents rather than his own supporters. Despite contrary evidence from congressional reviews and more than 700 completed prosecutions, the Post-UMD poll found that a quarter of Americans believe the FBI “probably” or “definitely” instigated the Capitol attack.
“There was antifa and there was FBI,” Trump said in Sioux Center. “There were a lot of other people there, too, leading the charge.”
Trump’s lawyers have indicated in court filings that they want to make these conspiracy theories part of his defense against the federal criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith involving Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Experts on democratic decline say flipping around warnings of undermining democracy serves to confuse, desensitize or disillusion voters.
“This is very common in polarized countries where a leader is autocratizing or eroding democracy using this terminology. They claim to be democracy’s biggest supporters,” said Jennifer McCoy, a political science professor at Georgia State University who studies the issue. “Unfortunately, he’s getting a lot of buy-in from both right-wing media and from his supporters. They’re believing this.”
Some Trump supporters at the venues where Trump was campaigning echoed the former president’s attempts to minimize or distort the Jan. 6 attack.
Among the hundreds of Trump fans filling the bleachers of the Clinton Middle School gymnasium ahead of Trump’s speech there on Saturday, Myrna Neumann, 80, rolled her eyes at the mention of the attack on the Capitol three years ago. “They try to make it a big deal,” she said of the media to her 81-year-old husband, Carl, beside her.
Neumann blamed the violence on Democrats in disguise and said the charges against Trump hardened her support for him. “It’s just another thing that makes us respect Trump more,” she said.
At Trump’s event in Newton, Shari Smith, 59, said she had seen videos of police opening doors for rioters (which happened in some instances after officers were overrun by the mob).
“I don’t think we’ve heard all of the truth of what happened,” she said. “I think it all got twisted.”
“It wasn’t an insurrection,” Glenn Bayles added in Newton, repeating the falsehood popular in right-wing media that there were no weapons at the riot. “There were some FBI undercover. I think it was all pretty much set up. … The only people that was really a threat to this democracy is the liberals and the Democrats who are in charge right now.”
Bill Halpin, 69, who said he had not yet decided who to caucus for in the GOP’s first nominating contest on Jan. 15, said Trump should have done more to call off the mob once the violence started.
“I don’t think it was an insurrection, so to speak. But it got out of hand,” he said. “And there was some people who did really stupid stuff and should have been arrested and put in jail.”
Many people are especially drawn to strong leaders making bold promises during times of tumult, McCoy said, and that may lead them to discount Trump’s own statements about how he would pardon rioters and punish his critics. Recognizing the dangers requires hearing from trusted authority figures in politics, faith, culture or civil society, she said.
“What it really takes is courage within that camp: Republican leaders with the courage to stand up, as some of them have done, obviously Liz Cheney, and they’ve been punished for doing do; that’s why it takes a tremendous amount of courage,” McCoy said. “Unfortunately, we don’t see this happening. This is why this year is going to be extremely important. It is going to be an election about democracy and how much the American public is willing to support democracy.”
In North Liberty, Iowa, a couple named Deb and Mark from Muscatine, who spoke on the condition that their last name not be used to talk more freely, said they voted for every Republican from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney but now identify as independents because they condemned Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.
“He sat there and ate the cheeseburger and did nothing. That is not a president that I want leading my country,” Deb said. “He has such a hold on the Republican Party that it’s scary.”
LeVine reported from Newton, Iowa. Meryl Kornfield in Clinton, Iowa, and Dylan Wells in North Liberty, Iowa, contributed to this report.
