President Biden has warned that American democracy could fall if Donald Trump wins a second term in this year’s presidential election.
In a campaign speech to mark the third anniversary of the Capitol riots on Saturday, Mr Biden has accused his leading Republican opponent of embracing “political violence” and warned voters: “Your freedom is on the ballot.”
The speech – Mr Biden’s first campaign event of the year – gave examples of Mr Trump’s links to the “mob” that stormed the Capitol in January 2021 and his plans for a second term in the White House.
“We’ve been blessed for so long with a strong, stable democracy, it’s easy to forget why so many before us risked their lives to strengthen democracy,” Mr Biden said.
“If democracy falls, we’ll lose that freedom, lose the power of we, the people, to shape our destiny.”
Mr Biden appeared to restrain himself as he recalled how Mr Trump had laughed about a Jan 6 rioter looking for Nancy Pelosi in the Capitol.
“He thinks that’s funny, he laughed about it. What a sick…” Mr Biden said, stopping himself.“What’s Trump done? He’s called these insurrectionists ‘patriots’, and he promised to pardon them if he returns to office.”
The speech marked a pivot in Mr Biden’s campaign towards more vocal criticism of Mr Trump and his “MAGA” followers – an initialism of his slogan “Make America Great Again”.
National polls show that the two men are neck-and-neck in a hypothecated race that would occur if Mr Trump wins the Republican nomination later this year.
Currently, the former president is polling about 50 points ahead of both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, and aides believe that he will have secured the required Republican delegates to win the nomination by mid-March – only two months into the primary race.
Mr Biden’s speech was held near Valley Forge, the historic site where George Washington regrouped American forces during the war of independence almost 250 years ago.
The speech also repeated a claim of Mr Biden’s that Mr Trump uses the rhetoric of 1930s facism in his campaigns.
“He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany,” said Mr Biden, who was greeted by chants from supporters of “four more years”.
He added: “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”
Addressing voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania, Mr Biden said that the “defence, protection and preservation of democracy” would remain the “central cause of [his] presidency” if he was to win a second term this year.
Mr Biden’s shift towards personal criticism of Mr Trump comes as polls show that his central campaign message of “Bidenomics” has failed to win over swing voters, leaving him trailing his main rival on the issue of the economy in six battleground states polled for The Telegraph by Redfield & Wilton Strategies.
The president’s election campaign is hoping to win back the support of core Democrat voters, including ethnic and religious minority groups and young liberal voters, who have become less enthusiastic about Mr Biden since the 2020 election.
It is thought that a more emotive campaign based on the excesses of the first Trump presidency could persuade liberals to turn out on polling day in an attempt to keep a Republican out of the White House.
Polls show that voters are less likely to associate Mr Trump with the Capitol riots now than they were soon after they took place.
In the days after the attack, 52 per cent of American adults said that Mr Trump bore a lot of responsibility for the chaos of Jan 6, according to the Pew Research Center, but by early 2022 that figure had fallen to 43 per cent.
Mr Trump’s alleged involvement or encouragement of the riots will be examined in a federal trial in Washington later this year, when the former president will stand trial for a raft of charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States.
