By ZEKE MILLER and JOSH BOAK
PHILADELPHIA (AP) —
President Joe Biden charged in a prime-time handle Thursday that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to assist counter what he sketched as darkish forces inside the Republican Party making an attempt to subvert democracy.
In his speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Biden unleashed the trimmings of the presidency in an unusually robust and sweeping indictment of Trump and what he mentioned has turn into the dominant pressure of the opposition social gathering. His broadside got here barely two months earlier than Americans head to the polls in bitterly contested midterm elections that Biden calls a crossroads for the nation.
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he mentioned earlier than an viewers of tons of, elevating his voice over pro-Trump hecklers exterior the constructing the place the nation’s founding was debated. He mentioned he wasn’t condemning the 74 million individuals who voted for Trump in 2020, however added, “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” utilizing the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” marketing campaign slogan.
The express effort by Biden to marginalize Trump and his followers marks a pointy latest flip for the president, who preached his need to result in nationwide unity in his Inaugural handle.
Biden, who largely prevented even referring to “the former guy” by identify throughout his first 12 months in workplace, has grown more and more vocal in calling out Trump personally. Now, emboldened by his social gathering’s summertime legislative wins and cautious of Trump’s return to the headlines, he has sharpened his assaults, final week likening the “MAGA philosophy” to “semi-fascism.”
Wading into dangerous political terrain, Biden strained to stability his criticism with an enchantment to extra conventional Republicans to make their voices heard. Meanwhile, GOP leaders swiftly accused him of solely furthering political divisions.
Delivering a preemptive rebuttal from Scranton, Pennsylvania, House Republican chief Kevin McCarthy mentioned it’s Biden, not Republicans, making an attempt to divide Americans.
“In the past two years, Joe Biden has launched an assault on the soul of America, on its people, on its laws, on its most sacred values,” McCarthy mentioned. “He has launched an assault on our democracy. His policies have severely wounded America’s soul, diminished America’s spirit and betrayed America’s trust.”
Asked about McCarthy’s criticism, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mentioned earlier Thursday that “we understand we hit a nerve” with the GOP chief, and quoted the Republican’s prior statements saying Trump bore accountability for the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump plans a rally this weekend in Scranton, Biden’s birthplace
White House officers mentioned the sharp tenor of Biden’s remarks mirrored his mounting concern about Trump allies’ ideological proposals and relentless denial of the nation’s 2020 election outcomes.
“Equality and democracy are under assault” within the U.S., Biden charged, casting Trump and his backers within the GOP as a menace to the nation’s system of presidency, its standing overseas and its residents’ lifestyle.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans “promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence,” he mentioned. They “are determined to take this country backwards.”
“Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” he mentioned, referencing the social points that Democrats have seemed to put front-and-center for voters this fall.
Biden’s look was promoted as an official, taxpayer-funded occasion, a mark of how the president views defeating the Trump agenda as a coverage goal as a lot as a political one. Red and blue lights illuminated the brick of Independence Hall, because the Marine Band performed “Hail to the Chief” and a pair of Marine sentries stood at parade relaxation within the backdrop. Still, the main broadcast tv networks didn’t carry the handle reside.
The president appealed for residents to “vote, vote, vote” to guard their democracy. “For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it is not.”
Biden harked again to the 2017 white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, which he mentioned introduced him out of political retirement to problem Trump. Biden argued that the nation faces the same crossroads within the coming months, and he forged defending the “soul of the nation” as “the work of my presidency — a mission I believe in with my whole soul.”
But Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufman mentioned in an announcement that Biden was utilizing the techniques of an authoritarian regime, “trying to turn his political opponents into an enemy of the state.”
Larry Diamond, an skilled on democracy and senior fellow on the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, mentioned calling Trump out for assaults on democracy “can be manipulated or framed as being partisan. And if you don’t call it out, you are shrinking from an important challenge in the defense of democracy.”
The White House has tried to maintain Biden faraway from the authorized and political maelstrom surrounding the Department of Justice’s discovery of categorised paperwork in Trump’s Florida residence. Still, Biden has pointed to some Republicans’ fast condemnation of federal legislation enforcement, to argue “you can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.”
His journey to Philadelphia was simply certainly one of his three to the state inside per week, an indication of Pennsylvania’s significance within the midterms, with aggressive Senate and governor’s races. However, neither Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrats’ Senate nominee, nor Attorney General Josh Shapiro, their decide for governor, attended Thursday evening.
The White House meant the speech to unite acquainted themes: holding out bipartisan legislative wins on weapons and infrastructure as proof that democracies “can deliver,” pushing again on GOP insurance policies on weapons and abortion that Biden says are out of step with most individuals’s views.
The challenges have solely elevated because the tumult surrounding the 2020 election and the Capitol assault.
Lies surrounding that presidential race have triggered harassment and demise threats in opposition to state and native election officers and new restrictions on mail voting in Republican-dominated states. County election officers have confronted stress to ban the usage of voting tools, efforts generated by conspiracy theories that voting machines had been in some way manipulated to steal the election.
Candidates who dispute Trump’s loss have been impressed to run for state and native election posts, promising to revive integrity to a system that has been undermined by false claims.
There isn’t any proof of any widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines. Judges, together with ones appointed by Trump, dismissed dozens of lawsuits filed after the election, and Trump’s personal legal professional basic known as the claims bogus. Yet Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling has proven about two-thirds of Republicans say they don’t assume Biden was legitimately elected president.
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Associated Press author Zeke Miller reported from Washington. Chris Megerian in Washington and Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”