Rarely in American politics has a leading presidential candidate made such grave accusations about a rival: warning that he is willing to violate the Constitution. Claiming that he is eager to persecute political rivals. Calling him a dire threat to democracy.
Those arguments have come from President Biden’s speeches, including his forceful address on Friday, as he hammers away at his predecessor. But they are also now being brazenly wielded by Donald J. Trump, the only president to try to overthrow an American election.
Three years after the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump and his campaign are engaged in an audacious and baseless attempt to paint Mr. Biden as the true menace to the nation’s foundational underpinnings. Mr. Trump’s strategy aims to upend a world in which he has publicly called for suspending the Constitution, vowed to turn political opponents into legal targets and suggested that the nation’s top military general should be executed.
The result has been a salvo of recriminations from the top candidates in each party, including competing events to mark Saturday’s third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol.
The eagerness from each man to paint the other as an imminent threat signals that their potential rematch this year will be framed as nothing short of a cataclysmic battle for the future of democracy — even as Mr. Trump tries to twist the very idea to suit his own ends.
“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him — not America, not you,” Mr. Biden said Friday, speaking near Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”
On Friday evening, at his own rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, Mr. Trump fired back, calling Mr. Biden’s remarks “pathetic fear-mongering” and again accusing him, without any evidence, of wielding federal law enforcement to attack his political opponents.
“They’ve weaponized government, and he’s saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Mr. Trump said incredulously.
Also in the NYT, On Jan. 6 Anniversary, Trump Repeats Lie That 2020 Election Was Stolen:
Three years to the day that supporters of Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory, Mr. Trump said yet again that the mob had been acting “peacefully and patriotically.” He called for the release of people imprisoned for their actions that day, and he criticized the congressional committee that investigated the attack as “fake.”
Speaking to crowds of several hundred people at two events on Saturday in Iowa, Mr. Trump,who faces criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, made only passing references to the riot, focusing much of his speeches instead on criticizing President Biden’s policies.
But at his second event, Mr. Trump — who has repeatedly referred to the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack as “hostages” — called on Mr. Biden to free them. More than 1,200 people have been arrested in connection with the attack, 170 have been convicted of crimes at trial and more than 700 have pleaded guilty.
“Release the J6 hostages, Joe,” Mr. Trump said in Clinton, Iowa. “Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”