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Biden Condemns Trump as Dire

Threat to Democracy in a Blistering
Speech
The president framed the election as a choice between a
candidate devoted to upholding American ideals and a chaos
agent willing to discard them for his personal benefit.
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“We must be clear,” President Biden said in a speech on Friday in Blue Bell, Pa.
“Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.” Pete Marovich for The New
York Times

By Reid J. Epstein
Reporting from Blue Bell, Pa.
Jan. 5, 2024

President Biden on Friday delivered a ferocious condemnation of

Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 opponent, warning in searing
language that the former president had directed an insurrection
and would aim to undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he
returned to power.
On the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the
Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Biden framed the coming
election as a choice between a candidate devoted to upholding
America’s centuries-old ideals and a chaos agent willing to discard
them for his personal benefit.
“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to
do,” Mr. Biden warned in a speech at a community college not far
from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where George Washington
commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Exhorting
supporters to prepare to vote this fall, he said: “We all know who
Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”
In an intensely personal address that at one point nearly led Mr.
Biden to curse Mr. Trump by name, the president compared his
rival to foreign autocrats who rule by fiat and lies. He said Mr.
Trump had failed the basic test of American leaders, to trust the
people to choose their elected officials and abide by their decisions.

“We must be clear,” Mr. Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot.

Your freedom is on the ballot.”
The harshness of Mr. Biden’s attack on his rival illustrated both
what his campaign believes to be the stakes of the 2024 election
and his perilous political standing. Confronted with low approval
ratings , bad head-to-head polling against Mr. Trump, worries about
his age and lingering unease with the economy , Mr. Biden is Editors’ Picks
turning increasingly to the figure who has proved to be Democrats’
A.I.Can Make Art
single best motivator. That Feels Human.
Whose Fault Is
That?
Mr. Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Iowa soon after Mr.
Biden’s appearance, quickly lashed back, calling the president’s College Bowl
comments “pathetic fearmongering” and accusing him of “abusing Games in Trouble?
Send in the Memes.
George Washington’s legacy.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks carried echoes of the 2020 campaign, when he A Hopeful
Reminder: You’re
presented himself as the caretaker of “the soul of America” against Going to Die
a Trump presidency that he and Democratic supporters argued
was on the verge of causing permanent damage to the country.
The 31-minute speech was Mr. Biden’s first public campaign event
since he announced in April that he would seek re-election and
was, in tone and content, arguably his most forceful public
denunciation of Mr. Trump since the two men became political
rivals in 2019.

Mr. Biden’s appearance, meant as a kickoff to help define the 2024

campaign, was an early effort to revive the politically sprawling
anti-Trump coalition that propelled Democrats to key victories in
recent elections. Mr. Biden’s task now is to persuade those voters
to view the 2024 contest as the same kind of national emergency
that they sensed in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, participated in a wreath ceremony at the
Valley Forge National Arch before his speech on Friday. Pete Marovich for The New York
Times

He began with an extensive recounting of Mr. Trump’s actions

before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack. The country, Mr. Biden
said, cannot afford to allow Mr. Trump and his supporters to
present a whitewashed version of that day and spread falsehoods
about the violent outcome of their effort to undo the 2020 election
results. Upholding the nation’s democracy, Mr. Biden said, is “the
central cause of my presidency.”

Takeaways From Trump’s Indictment in the 2020 Election Inquiry

Four charges for the former president. Former President Donald Trump was
charged with four counts in connection with his widespread efforts to
overturn the 2020 election. The indictment was filed by the special counsel
Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington. Here are some key
takeaways:

Mr. Biden said that, by contrast, Mr. Trump “refuses to denounce

political violence,” asserting, “You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and
pro-American.”
Mr. Trump and his allies have spent the three years since the
Capitol riot denying and deflecting his responsibility, downplaying
the seriousness of the bloodshed and going so far as to suggest it
was all a plot by Mr. Biden’s allies deep within the federal
government to make Mr. Trump look bad.
“Trump is trying to steal history, the same way he tried to steal the
election,” Mr. Biden said. “It was on television. We saw it with our
own eyes.”

Mr. Biden made no mention of the 91 felony charges the former

president faces in four jurisdictions, sticking to a vow to steer clear
of his rival’s legal problems and focusing squarely on Mr. Trump’s
actions rather than any potential criminal consequences for them.
“Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn
the 2020 election. The legal path took him back to the truth, that I
won the election and he was a loser,” Mr. Biden said. “He had one
act left, one desperate act available to him, the violence of Jan. 6.”
For a president who has faced intense scrutiny over his vigor in
public appearances, the speech was a deftly delivered, focused
argument about this year’s stakes. It was Mr. Biden’s latest attempt
to build his political identity around the ideas of restoring national
unity and upholding fairness, democracy and collective patriotism.
He has come back to those themes many times, during his brief
push for voting rights legislation in early 2022, then as the midterm
elections approached and most recently in September, during a
speech in Arizona honoring former Senator John McCain.
On Friday, Mr. Biden sought to frame Mr. Trump as the leader of a
cult of personality, and his Republican allies as sycophants. The
president mentioned the recent $148 million judgment against
Rudolph W. Giuliani for his lies about Georgia election workers, as
well as the $787.5 million that Fox News was ordered to pay to
settle a defamation case about its role in spreading election lies.

Mr. Biden lamented that Fox News hosts and Republican officials
who condemned Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 behavior in the moment had
since changed their tune and repeated his falsehoods.
“Politics, fear and money all intervened, and now these MAGA
voices who know the truth about Jan. 6 have abandoned
democracy,” Mr. Biden said.
But what remains unclear is how much Mr. Biden’s democracy
pitch will resonate with voters who remain nervous about an
improving economy , and wary of re-electing an 81-year-old who is
already the oldest president in U.S. history.
Even some who have expressed deep fears about Mr. Trump’s
authoritarian impulses are skeptical that the subject will be a
winning message in 2024.
“As a Biden campaign theme, I think the threat to democracy pitch
is a bust,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah wrote in a text message to
a New York Times reporter. “Jan. 6 will be four years old by the
election. People have processed it, one way or another. Biden needs
fresh material, a new attack, rather than kicking a dead political
horse.”

Mr. Biden and his campaign have often sought to remind voters of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021. Jason Andrew
for The New York Times

Democrats have found that while ideas of democracy can motivate

the party’s most engaged voters, it can be more of a struggle to
connect lofty ideals to voters who are more focused on economic
issues like high prices and interest rates. In the 2022 midterm
elections, months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, far more Democratic
candidates made abortion rights central to their messaging as
opposed to threats to democracy.

A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations

Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President
Donald Trump? We’re here to help.

Key Cases and Inquiries: The former president faces several

investigations at both the state and the federal levels, into matters related
to his business and political careers. Here is a close look at each .

Case Tracker: Trump is at the center of four criminal investigations. Keep

track of the developments in each here .

What if Trump Is Convicted?: Will any of the proceedings hinder Trump’s

2024 presidential campaign? Can a convicted felon even run for office?
Here is what we know, and what we don’t know .

Receive a Weekly Update: Sign up for the Trump on Trial newsletter to get
the latest news and analysis on the cases in New York, Florida, Georgia
and Washington, D.C.

Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who

convened planning sessions in 2020 to prepare for ways the Trump
administration could disrupt that year’s election, said she was
worried that “we’re in the nothing-matters phase of American
politics.” Mr. Trump’s supporters, she lamented, become only more
loyal each time he does something that in a previous era would
have been instantly disqualifying.
“It’s not clear to me that anything Biden does could fundamentally
change any of that,” Ms. Brooks said. “So I’m actually quite
depressed.”
The Democratic governor of the state Mr. Biden was visiting, Josh
Shapiro, who won office in 2022 against an election denier who
chartered buses to Washington on Jan. 6, said before Mr. Biden’s
speech that the key for the president and fellow Democrats would
be connecting the idea of democracy with bread-and-butter issues
like health care and the economy. A return to power by Mr. Trump,
he said, would “create chaos” across a spectrum of issues that
would affect people.

“He brought real chaos to this country, and we should not allow
that to come back,” Mr. Shapiro said.
Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was more succinct. “I see
’24 as good versus evil,” he said.
Mr. Biden threaded his speech with warnings that Mr. Trump and
Republicans would threaten not only democracy but also major
Democratic priorities — abortion rights, voting rights and
economic and environmental justice.
Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, a
nonprofit dedicated to combating authoritarianism, said he had
stressed to Mr. Biden’s aides that the president needed to connect
democracy to voters’ personal experiences on other issues, in the
same way Mr. Trump repeats to his supporters that prosecutions of
him are persecutions of them.
“Democracy is not just a way of structuring elections for order in
our government,” Mr. Bassin said. “It’s a set of values about the
kind of communities we want to live in and the way that we want to
live as neighbors.”
Mr. Biden warned in his speech that Mr. Trump was not being shy
about what he would do in a second term.

“Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what
he’s promising for the future,” Mr. Biden said. “He’s not hiding the
ball.”
Mr. Biden then recounted, in exacting detail, how a Trump
campaign rally last year began with a choir of rioters who stormed
the Capitol on Jan. 6 singing the national anthem while a video of
the damage played on a big screen. Mr. Trump had watched with
approval.
The scene, Mr. Biden suggested, would be the nation’s fate if Mr.
Trump and his allies returned to power.
“This is like something out of a fairy tale,” Mr. Biden said. “A bad
fairy tale.”
Kellen Browning contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa, and Michael Gold from
Mason City, Iowa.

Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The
Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 6, 2024 , Section A , Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline:
In Blistering Speech, President Condemns Trump as Dire Threat . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Our Coverage of the Capitol Riot and its Fallout

T he Events on Jan. 6

Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump raided

the U.S. Capitol . Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded .

A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a

New York Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why .

Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in
connection with the attack.
Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never
breached the Capitol, Jan. 6 wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start .

The Federal Case Against Trump

The Indictment: Trump was indicted on Aug. 1 after a sprawling federal
investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.
Here is how the indictment was structured .

Trump’s Immunity Claims: Trump’s lawyers are hoping to convince a three-judge

panel that the Constitution affords him immunity from actions he undertook as
president . The assertion could help him chew up time in his bid to delay any trial
until after Election Day .

The Trial: Trump vowed to appeal the decision by the judge presiding over the
case to schedule the start of his trial on March 4 . Legal experts say he can’t
disrupt the trial that way — but there is a longer-shot possibility .

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