Biden takes Trump to task fiery first campaign speech of 2024
It featured the hallmarks of all his major remarks: off-script digressions, history lessons, and an earnest optimism about what America can be—despite how things look and feel today.
President Joe Biden officially kicked off his 2024 pursuit of a second term this November with sharp words for his predecessor Donald Trump, the former commander-in-chief who three years ago tomorrow incited an insurrection in the US Capitol.
“His lies brought a mob to Washington. He promised it would be wild. And he told the crowd to fight like hell,” Biden said in a fiery speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the winter encampment of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. “Then as usual, he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House as America was attacked from within.”
Trump, he said, sicced his supporters at the US Capitol in an act of desperation after he lost every single court challenge to the 2020 election.
“But the legal path just to jump back to the truth: That I had won the election and he was a loser.”
Biden is most passionate when he’s discussing democracy and freedom as the linchpins of America’s battle for the soul of the nation, which explains why this isn’t the first speech of its kind—and won’t be the last. The president delivered one ahead of the 2022 midterms to many side-eyes from the pundit class. And the origin of his 2020 candidacy was inspired by the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
“Trump won’t do what an American president must do. He refuses to denounce political violence,” Biden said during the speech. “So hear me clearly: Political violence is never acceptable in the United States.”
Biden, of course, won in 2020. Democrats defied history and suffered modest losses in the House while holding onto the Senate in 2022. And Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024. The threats to democracy and freedom haven’t disappeared and discussing them pays political dividends.
But the discussion is also the foundation of a broader policy argument: None of the freedoms Democrats are fighting to enact or protect matter if the country’s foundational governing idea is ripped away.
“Yes, we’ll be voting on many issues: On the freedom to vote and have your vote counted. On the freedom of choice, the freedom to have a fair shot, the freedom from fear. And we’ll debate and disagree,” Biden said. “The choice and contest between those competing forces, between solidarity and division, is perennial. But this time it's so different. You can't have a contest if you see politics as an all-out war instead of a peaceful way to resolve our differences.”
The 2024 election will be another test case of the effectiveness of this message.
The president will take it from Valley Forge to South Carolina on Monday to speak at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where a white supremacist murdered churchgoers almost nine years ago. And it will hit the airwaves tomorrow in the first Biden campaign ad of the year, which frames former President Trump and MAGA extremism as the existential threat to our democracy and aims to showcase Biden as the leader to defend the hard-won freedoms that are at risk under a second Trump term.
There’s legitimate concern about the president’s age. But if the first speech is an early indication, he’s up for the rigors of a high-stakes reelect.
Before the Vally Forge speech, Biden attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Memorial Arch, a monument to George Washington and his army that memorializes their encampment at Valley Forge over the winter of 1777-1778.
Biden also stopped to visit Washington’s headquarters, a stone house he used during the winter encampment before his motorcade escorted him to the event venue.
During the speech, he eulogized Washington as someone who could have held onto power if he wanted to after defeating the British empire but did not because doing so would have betrayed the America he and his troops at Valley Forge fought for.
“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,” he said. “We are not perfect, but at our best, we face head on the good, the bad, and the truth of who we are. That’s what great nations do, and we are a great nation—the greatest of nations.”
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