UPDATED 3:09 P.M.
VALLEY FORGE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Friday marked three years since the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol with a warning to voters that Republican Donald Trump, his likely 2024 election opponent, is a threat to the country’s standing as a free democracy.
Trump, president from 2017 to 2021, who is leading the field for the Republican nomination for president, contested his defeat in the 2020 election, prompting thousands of his supporters to attack the U.S Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The failed bid to stop formal certification of the result killed five people and injured dozens of police officers.
Before his speech at a community college in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, Biden took a tour of the Valley Forge site of George Washington’s Revolutionary War-era winter headquarters in the bitterly cold months of late 1777 and early 1778.
Biden compared Trump’s bid to hang on to power despite his 2020 loss to Washington, who stepped down willingly after two terms as he first U.S. president.
“George Washington was at the height of his power having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth. He could have held onto that power as long as he wanted. But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops of Valley Forge had fought for,” Biden said, according to speech excerpts released by his campaign.
“In America, our leaders don’t hold on to power relentlessly. Our leaders return power to the people – willingly. You do your duty. You serve your country. And ours is a country worthy of service. We are not perfect, but at our best, we face head on the good, the bad, the truth of who we are. That’s what great nations do, and we are a great nation – the greatest of nations,” he said.
Biden, a Democrat, was kicking off his campaign in 2024 with the pitch that he represents a continuation of the style of democratic government Americans have grown up with and that a vote for Trump would be a leap into a dark, uncharted future.
Biden made his appearance a day before the Jan. 6 anniversary to avoid a forecast winter storm.
Ahead of Biden’s speech, the Trump campaign released an ad accusing Biden of being “the true destroyer of democracy” citing special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.
Smith, a veteran prosecutor known for pursuing mob bosses, has charged Trump with conspiring to illegally subvert the results of the 2020 election.
The ad said Biden was attempting “to justify his push to imprison his leading political rival and deprive Americans of their right to choose their next president through corrupt political lawfare.”
As president, Biden has warned about the future of U.S. democracy before, including on the first anniversary of Jan. 6, and in a fiery Sept. 2022 speech where he called Trump and his Republican followers extremists who threatened to take the country backward.
Republicans challenging Trump in the 2024 nominating contest have mostly steered clear of criticizing Trump’s actions on that day, as opinion polls show Republican voters are less likely to blame Trump for his actions on Jan. 6 than they were three years ago.
Whether Biden’s Friday speech will make an impact 10 months before Election Day – in a politically polarized country where voters get news and information from wildly different sources – remains to be seen.
The 2024 race is expected to be closely contested, and Biden aides see Pennsylvania, home to Biden’s Scranton birthplace, as a must-win state. He won in 2020 with 50.01% of the vote. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania with 48.58% of the vote.
Biden’s arguments have done little to soothe his own supporters’ concerns about the state of the economy or his age, 81.
Trump, 77, holds a marginal, two-point lead in a head-to-head matchup with Biden, 38% to 36%, with 26% of respondents saying they were unsure or might vote for someone else, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Biden prepared for the long-planned speech by inviting a group of historians and scholars to the White House for a wide-ranging conversation on the threats to American democracy.
The audience is expected to include people directly affected by “election denialism and the events of Jan. 6,” according to a person familiar with the planning of the speech.
TRUMP ON THE TRAIL
Trump has portrayed the 2024 race in similarly existential terms, calling his criminal trials a persecution and describing Biden as a crook.
Despite facing state and federal charges over election interference, Trump in recent months has teased acting as a dictator on “day one” and pledged to investigate, incarcerate and otherwise take revenge on his political opponents.
The Republican frontrunner is expected to spend Saturday’s anniversary campaigning with rallies in Iowa, which hosts the first Republican nominating contest of the presidential race on Jan. 15. His leading opponents have largely avoided raising the Jan. 6 attack or Trump’s role in it.
Lawyers for Trump have disputed that he engaged in insurrection and argued that his remarks to supporters on the day of the 2021 riot were protected by his constitutional right to free speech.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler, Jonathan Oatis and Alistair Bell)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Friday will mark three years since the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S Capitol with a warning to voters that Republican Donald Trump is a threat to the country’s standing as a free democracy.
Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021 and is again seeking the Republican nomination for president, contested his defeat in the 2020 election, prompting thousands of his supporters to attack the U.S Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed bid to stop formal certification of the result.
Speaking near George Washington’s Revolutionary War-era headquarters in Pennsylvania, Biden, a Democrat, will inaugurate the 2024 campaign year with an implicit pitch that a vote for him means a continuation of American style of democratic government and a vote for Trump a leap into an uncharted future.
Biden was scheduled to deliver his remarks a day before the Jan. 6 anniversary to avoid a forecast winter storm.
Biden aides expect the 2024 race will be closely contested and see Pennsylvania as a must-win. Biden won Pennsylvania, where he was born, in 2020 with 50.01% of the vote. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania with 48.58% of the vote.
What impact Biden’s Friday speech will make in a politically polarized country 10 months away from Election Day is an open question.
Biden has long used his platform to warn Americans about Trump, but that has done little to shake the faith of tens of millions of the ex-president’s supporters, who have given him a commanding lead for the Republican nomination in public opinion polls.
In addition, Biden’s arguments have done little to soothe his own supporters’ concerns about the state of the economy or his age, 81.
Trump, 77, has portrayed the 2024 race in similarly existential terms, calling his criminal trials a persecution and describing Biden as a crook.
Despite facing federal charges over election interference, Trump in recent months has teased acting as a dictator on “day one” and pledged to investigate, incarcerate and otherwise take revenge on his political opponents.
Trump is expected to spend Saturday’s anniversary campaigning with rallies in Iowa, which hosts the first Republican nominating contest of the presidential race on Jan. 15. His leading opponents have largely avoided raising the Jan. 6 attack or Trump’s role in it.
Lawyers for Trump have disputed that he engaged in insurrection and argued that his remarks to supporters on the day of the 2021 riot were protected by his constitutional right to free speech.
Authorities are seeking information about more than 80 people who committed violence at the Capitol and remain unidentified, Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters on Thursday. Graves’ office has overseen the prosecution of more than 1,200 people so far accused of committing crimes during the attack.
Graves said authorities have two more years to charge rioters before the statute of limitations expires.
“Our democracy is fragile,” he told reporters during a briefing on the investigation into the attack. “We cannot replace votes and deliberation with violence and intimidation.”
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Biden’s Friday event is officially billed as a re-election event, his most significant foray on the campaign trail to date after he spent much of 2023 touting his signature legislation and the economy at White House events not technically associated with the campaign.
In 2024, Biden aides plan to pair the threat-to-democracy argument with more bread-and-butter topics about U.S. job growth, falling inflation, healthcare, gun violence and abortion rights, hoping to reassemble the coalition of 81 million voters that delivered Biden to the White House in 2020, with his party then in control of both houses of Congress.
Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections lost control of the House of Representatives to Republicans, but maintained control of the Senate with a slim margin.
Trump holds a marginal, two-point lead in a head-to-head matchup with Biden, 38% to 36%, with 26% of respondents saying they were unsure or might vote for someone else, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Biden prepared for the long-planned speech by inviting a group of historians and scholars to the White House for a wide-ranging conversation on the threats to the country’s democracy.
The audience is expected to include people directly affected by “election denialism and the events of Jan. 6,” according to a person familiar with the planning of the speech.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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