The heated rhetoric coming from politicians came under greater scrutiny over the weekend as former President Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania.
On several occasions piror to the assassination attempt, President Biden used extreme language against his opponent, painting him as a threat to American democracy and claiming he will be a “dictator” if he wins the 2024 election.
Biden, while calling Trump a threat to the country, compared what he called an “extreme MAGA” Republican philosophy to “semi-fascism.” Biden’s attacks have become a crucial part of his campaign strategy.
Biden told donors in a private call, which was reported publicly last week, he wanted the party and the media to put a “bullseye” on Trump. The president also reportedly told participants that his strategy was to “attack, attack, attack.”
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“I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” he said.
While speaking with campaign donors in November, Biden compared Trump’s pledge to “root out” political enemies he described as “vermin” to that of the Nazis. The Trump campaign rebuked the “disgusting connection.”
“Our very democracy is at stake,” Biden said as part of the same speech. Trump “is running on a platform to end democracy as we know it, and he’s not even hiding the ball.”
Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech in September 2022 contained some of his most extreme rhetoric about Trump and the so-called “MAGA Republicans.”
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he said. “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.”
Biden has routinely attacked Trump supporters in campaign speeches.
“I don’t respect the MAGA Republicans,” Biden said in August 2022.
“MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” he said in January 2024.
Biden has also run TV ads which claim Trump, if he won the presidency, would be a “dictator” who would use the Department of Justice to prosecute his political enemies.
“Trump stood with violent White supremacists, warned of a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the next election and if he is president again, vowed to be a ‘dictator,’” the ad, which aired on MSNBC in May, stated.
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Both Vice President Kamala Harris and Biden have similarly claimed in campaign speeches that Trump would use the DOJ to go after his enemies.
During another speech in Michigan on Friday, the day before the attempted assassination, Biden spoke to supporters, where he said Trump planned to be a “dictator on day one” and that he was “Putin’s puppy.”
“Trump is even more dangerous now. I’m serious, he’s snapped,” Biden said. “He says if he loses, there will be a bloodbath.”
As part of a notable speech kicking off his 2024 campaign in Pennsylvania ahead of the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riots, Biden accused Trump of threatening American democracy.
“We nearly lost America,” Biden told the crowd.
“The choice is clear,” Biden said. “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, put himself in power.”
Biden said “Donald Trump’s lies” are to blame for the deaths of several people who died in the Capitol riots, stating Trump “as usual, left the dirty work to others.”
“They died because his lies brought a mob to Washington,” the president said. Trump called Biden the “true threat to democracy” in response to the president’s remarks.
In the same speech, Biden also mentioned the October 2022 attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi. A hammer-wielding man had been allegedly trying to kidnap the speaker, and attacked her husband instead after realizing she was not at home.
Trump appeared to mock the incident in remarks at a California GOP convention, saying the speaker was “against building a wall at our border even though she has a wall around her house, which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
Biden appeared ready to curse Trump for those comments before abruptly stopping himself.
“You know, Trump and his MAGA supporters not only embrace political violence, but they laugh about it,” Biden said in his speech. “At his rally, he jokes about an intruder, whipped up by the Big Trump Lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull and echoing the very same words used on January 6th: “Where’s Nancy?”
“He laughed about it,” Biden said of Trump. “What a sick –,” he said, before stopping.
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