Tag: 2024 election

In the first campaign speech of his 2024 re-election bid, President Joe Biden denounced Donald Trump, his likely presidential election opponent, in the starkest terms yet, painting his rival as the protagonist of the January 6, 2021 attack and as a fundamental threat to the “sacred cause” of democracy.

“Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past,” Biden said in an impassioned 31-minute speech delivered near historic Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a day before the third anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol. “It’s what he’s promising for the future.”

“He told the crowd to ‘fight like hell.’ And all hell was unleashed,” Biden said of Trump’s role on January 6.

The president recounted in excruciating detail the shocking events that unfolded as hundreds of Trump supporters attempted to stop the formal certification of the 2020 presidential election: the shattering of doors and assaulting of Capitol Police officers, the makeshift gallows, and “Hang Mike Pence” chants, the rioters yelling “Where’s Nancy [Pelosi]?”, and Trump’s steadfast refusal to condemn the violence.

“We nearly lost America — lost it all,” Biden said in a near-whisper.

On Saturday morning, the Biden campaign released an ad filled with clips of comments Trump has made in the wake of January 6, in which he described the attack as “the most beautiful day” and the attackers as having “love in their heart.”

As Biden attempts to make January 6 and Trump’s ongoing threat to democracy central themes of his re-election bid, recent polling shows that Republicans have become even more sympathetic to Capitol rioters—and more likely to absolve Trump of responsibility—than they were at the time of the insurrection. “As time has gone on, politics, fear, money, all have intervened,” Biden said Friday. “And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy.”

“In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election,” the president added. “But we knew the truth because we saw it with our own eyes.”

In addition to recalling Trump’s actions on January 6, Biden’s speech ran through some of the low moments of Trump’s presidency, as well as his violent rhetoric on the campaign trail and promises to enact “revenge” and even install a “dictatorship” if re-elected. “Sometimes, I’m really happy the Irish in me can’t be seen,” Biden said while recounting Trump’s reported comments calling dead soldiers “suckers” and “losers.” (Biden’s late son, Beau Biden, served in Iraq.) “How dare he? Who in God’s name does he think he is?”

Speaking at a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa on Friday,  the former president mocked Biden’s speech, calling it “pathetic fear-mongering” meant to shift voters’ attention away from issues like the economy and immigration. Biden “cannot talk about a single issue that matters to hardworking Americans because he has failed you and betrayed you,” Trump said.

The GOP frontrunner went on to downplay yet again the events of January 6, describing the people imprisoned for their role in the attack as “hostages.” “Nobody has been treated ever in history so badly as those people,” Trump said.

Biden’s emphasis on democracy indeed comes as the president has been hobbled by persistently low approval ratings and poor head-to-head polling against Trump, as voters continue to express worries about the Democrat’s age, his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, and the state of the economy.

In his speech, Biden attempted to connect material issues important to voters to the broader theme of democracy. “Yes, we’ll be voting on many issues: on the freedom to vote and have your vote counted, on the freedom of choice, the freedom to have a fair shot, the freedom from fear. And we’ll debate and disagree,” he said. But “without democracy, no progress is possible.”

“Democracy is on the ballot,” the president said. “Your freedom is on the ballot.”

Donald Trump is poised to win the Republican nomination. If the polls are right, though they often aren’t, he’ll handily win Iowa and New Hampshire, at which point there will likely be very little chance of any non-Trump candidate slowing him down (not that they put up much of a fight to begin with). He’s also racking up endorsements, with prominent Republicans, including representatives Tom Emmer and Steve Scalise and Senator Tom Cotton, throwing him their support this week. And if you believe the polls pitting Trump against Joe Biden—I, for one, am skeptical—then the quadruply indicted former president is positioned to return to the White House.

Around this time last year, I argued that someone who tried to overturn the 2020 election shouldn’t be covered like a “normal” 2024 candidate, and yet, even four criminal indictments later, it feels like he is being treated that way. Whereas Trump enjoyed $ 2 billion worth of free media to dominate the news cycle during his 2016 run, these days he rarely sits down with mainstream outlets and opens himself up to scrutiny. His autocratic plans and extremist rants, while garnering some headlines, seem to quickly be forgotten amid the latest polls. Given that Trump and his allies have already told us that he plans to target the news media, whether “criminally or civilly,” it’s worth pausing and considering whether we’re adequately covering his unhinged behavior.

Take Trump’s holiday tirade, for example. On Christmas Eve, Trump accused “JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH,” the DOJ special counsel investigating election subversion, of “COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY”; he called the January 6 committee “POLITICAL HACKS & THUGS.” On New Year’s Day, Trump accused former January 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney of having “ILLEGALLY DELETE[D] & DESTROY[ED]” evidence that could have been used in his legal defense, while pushing the long-debunked claim that “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” turned down his request for 10,000 soldiers to go to the Capitol. Smith’s request for a ruling on whether Trump is immune from federal prosecution, he said, “is now completely compromised and should be thrown out and terminated, JUST LIKE THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS DID TO THE EVIDENCE!”

Close your eyes and imagine Joe Biden had written something like that. You can’t, of course, because Biden isn’t fundamentally unhinged. Yet Biden got beat up during the same period for saying that he’d been eating a lot of chicken parm while neglecting to mention his consumption of ice cream. The fact that Biden “forgot” he’d also recently eaten ice cream, and had to be nudged by Jill Biden during an interview with Rockin’ Eve host Ryan Seacrest, reached tan-suit levels of outrage on the right. The clip was boosted by the RNC’s rapid response team and picked up by conservative mainstream outlets like the Daily Wire, the New York Post, Radar Online, the Toronto Sun, and Sky News Australia. While Trump, 77, has his share of verbal slipups, Biden not immediately mentioning ice cream plays into the narrative, fueled in part by the media, that the 81-year-old president isn’t mentally up to the job of being president.

Meanwhile, Trump’s free to muse about “Crazy Nancy Pelosi turning down 10,000 soldiers” on Truth Social, a platform most Americans aren’t paying attention to. (Trump has about 6.5 million followers.) During Trump’s 2016 campaign, and the four years of his presidency that followed, his tweets generated entire news cycles. Journalists would follow a Republican politician down the hallways of Congress, begging him or her to weigh in on the latest tweet. Republican politicians pretending they didn’t see a tweet became such a common occurrence that journalists started printing out the tweets in order to question said members of Congress. “I didn’t see the tweet” was shorthand for Republicans refusing to confront Trump’s basest nature.

Trump doesn’t tweet anymore. His account was “permanently suspended” after the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” He was later allowed back by far-right favorite Elon Musk, but has not heeded that siren’s song—at least not yet. Besides, Twitter isn’t Twitter anymore; it’s X, a weird, abandoned mall in New Jersey. 

Yes, developments in Trump’s legal cases grab headlines (while raising major constitutional issues), but the former president seems to keep skating by; according to the polls, he’s thriving. The MAGA faithful have surely seen his mad rants, but persuadable voters, who aren’t plugged into Truth Social or far-right media, could’ve missed them given the relative lack of mainstream attention. Journalists may no longer be shocked or even surprised by Trump’s words and actions, but it’s no time to ignore them.

Maybe Trump benefits from the last eight-plus years of lowering the bar—his history of tweeting incendiary things, making racist remarks, and lying incessantly about the last election has perhaps made him essentially immune from accountability, and so nothing sticks. In 2016, Trump rode the outrage news cycle to victory, and now, two elections later, his abhorrent views and wannabe dictator behavior barely make a blip on the media radar. Will such “business as usual” coverage lull less plugged-in voters into thinking that Trump is behaving like a conventional candidate and would, somehow, act like a “normal” president?