“Fearmongering”: Trump hits back at Biden over “threat to democracy’ remark in his 2024 campaign speech

Washington: In response to President Joe Biden’s first 2024 campaign speech, Donald Trump accused him of “fearmongering and claimed that Biden was attacking him on the democracy issue because he couldn’t run on other matters, The Hill reported.

Biden described Trump as a clear threat to democracy who could not be trusted with a second term, it added.

Trump, while addressing his remarks to supporters in Sioux Centre, Iowa, characterized Biden’s speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a “pathetic fearmongering campaign event” and said that Biden was only attacking him on the issue of democracy because he could not run on other issues.

“Joe Biden’s record is an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure. Other than that, he’s doing quite well,” Trump said, mocking Biden’s delivery of his speech.

“Biden, if you take a look at what he’s doing on the border or inflation, or our military, that horrible day in Afghanistan, you look at what he’s done with energy,” Trump added. “All throughout the world, we’re an embarrassment as a country. We’ve become an embarrassment as a country.”

Trump at one point cast doubt on the election results in 2020, suggesting the roughly 75 million votes cast for him were inaccurate and the total was actually higher. Numerous court challenges brought by Trump allies in 2020 seeking to challenge the results were rejected or dismissed by various judges across the country, reported The Hill.

Trump, the front-runner to win the GOP presidential nomination, was speaking at the first of several scheduled events in Iowa this weekend.
The former president is hoping that his supporters lift him to a dominant victory and squash any potential momentum for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Meanwhile, for his first campaign event of 2024, Biden travelled to Valley Forge on Friday, a historically significant location in the American Revolution. The president laid out the stakes of November’s election, arguing that “democracy is on the ballot.”

In his speech, Biden spoke widely about the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when throngs of Trump supporters violently clashed with law enforcement and stormed the building to try and stop the certification of the 2020 election results, according to The Hill.

Biden connected Trump’s rhetoric directly to the violence of that day, and he warned that the former president threatened the foundations of American democracy.

“Today we are here to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” Biden said. “This isn’t rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time. It is what the 2024 election is all about.”

There is no confusion about who Trump is and what he intends to do. pic.twitter.com/TyDL3SFCpN

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 6, 2024

Polling in recent weeks has found more voters say they trust Trump over Biden on the economy, immigration and the Israel-Hamas war. Biden’s approval rating has sagged to record lows in recent weeks, even as his aides point to job numbers and GDP to argue the economy is in strong shape.

Reportedly, Biden underscored that his potential opponent, Donald Trump, is ready to jeopardise democracy by prioritising his own power, according to The Hill.

He also criticized Trump’s campaign for being fixated on the past rather than focusing on the future.

Delivering a furious attack on former President Trump, Biden issued a stark warning that Trump’s reelection would pose a threat to American democracy.

“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America. Not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy and put himself in power,” Biden said while striking an impassioned political attack on his opponent, Trump.