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.

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.”

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  • hark@lemmy.world
    99·
    11 months ago

    Biden was ruining things when he was younger too. He pushed the crime bill and pushed to make student loans non-dischargeable through bankruptcy. However he’s now forgiven since he pardoned a small fraction of the prisoners he helped imprison and forgave a small fraction of the student loans he helped build up. Most progressive president in modern US history!!!1

    • rckclmbr@lemm.ee
      12·
      11 months ago

      Nobody is saying Biden is great, I agree we could do better. So stop with the whataboutism. If it weren’t against Trump, there might be more tradeoffs to talk about. But right now it’s pretty much “anyone but Trump”

      • hark@lemmy.world
        34·
        11 months ago

        Any other poorly-applied buzzwords like “whataboutism” you’d like to apply? It doesn’t stop with trump. Before trump was bush, and the message was “we gotta stop bush”. It’s not a “just this time” sort of deal. Democrats will keep promoting the shittiest candidates and then say that we must vote them in because the alternative is worse. It doesn’t end.