Joe Biden will try to boost his campaign for the 2024 US presidential election with a major speech on Friday highlighting the risks that, according to him, Donald Trump poses to democracy, three years after the assault on the Capitol.
The 81-year-old Democrat, neck-and-neck or just behind Mr. Trump in recent polls, will portray his Republican rival as a threat to the nation in a speech near Valley Forge, Pa., a historic site in the American War of Independence.
The president was scheduled to give his speech on Saturday, three years to the day after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by supporters of Donald Trump who tried to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, but the date was moved forward to Friday due to a storm forecast.
But the assault on the Capitol remains a subject of contention in the United States: a quarter of Americans believe, without proof, that the FBI was behind it, according to a poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland released this week.
“Three years after the January 6 attack, Republicans are more sympathetic toward those who stormed the Capitol and more willing to absolve Donald Trump of any responsibility than they were in 2021” , writes the newspaper.
Efforts to boost the campaign of Mr. Biden, who likes to present himself as a defender of democracy, will continue Monday with a trip to a South Carolina church where a white supremacist fatally shot nine African Americans in 2015.
“Aggravated threat”
The head of the Democrat’s campaign team, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said that Joe Biden’s election speech four years ago, according to which he was leading a “battle for the soul of America”, was more relevant than ever.
“The threat that Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only deepened,” she said in a statement.
The locations chosen by Joe Biden for his speeches are symbolic: the first, Valley Forge, saw George Washington, the first president of the United States, rally the American military forces who fought against the British empire almost 250 years ago .
“We chose Valley Forge because George Washington unified the colonies there,” said Deputy Campaign Director Quentin Fulks. “Then he became president and he laid the foundation for the peaceful transition of power – something Donald Trump and the Republicans refused to do.”
This desire to accelerate Mr. Biden’s campaign comes after criticism from some Democrats who believe that it started too slowly.
The president failed to convince voters that the economy was improving despite favorable numbers, with many Americans still suffering from high food and housing costs.
“Biden would lose”
Other thorns in the Democrat’s side: immigration and the Mexican border puzzle, support for Israel’s war against Hamas which divides his party or even Congress which blocks his request for additional funds from Ukraine.
Mr. Biden’s refusal to mention Donald Trump’s multiple legal cases, so as not to give the impression of influencing the judicial system, also deprived him of one of his main weapons against the Republican billionaire.
But Joe Biden’s first flaw probably remains his age. His few slips and blunders of language are scrutinized.
He has the worst popularity rating for a sitting president in the month of December preceding an election.
“If the election were held tomorrow, President Biden would lose,” William Galston, an expert at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. Biden’s first campaign clip released on Thursday and which will be broadcast for the first time on television on Saturday warns of the “extreme” threat to democracy by broadcasting images of the attack on the Capitol of January 6, 2021.
“It was a horrible thing to see,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “The president will continue to speak out and be vocal about it.”
