Biden begins a critical clash with Trump about democracy
Even at their worst, political campaigns are public arguments, a raucous dialogue between clashing sets of ideas, from which a rough truth often emerges.
Consider the developing back-and-forth between President Biden and former president Donald Trump in that light. Biden’s message: At its core, this election is about the preservation of democracy. Trump is an authoritarian who has little regard for the US Constitution and will trample on democracy to preserve his own power. Never forget what you saw on Jan. 6, 2021: A Trump-instigated storming of the US Capitol aimed at overturning the legitimate results of the last presidential election.
“The entire nation watched in horror,” Biden said in his Jan. 5 speech at Valley Forge. “Members of his staff, members of his family, Republican leaders who were under attack at that very moment, pled with [Trump]. Act. Call off the mob. Imagine had he gone out and said, ‘Stop.’ Still, Trump did nothing.” Not for three hours, anyway. “It was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.”
Biden also underscored the way Trump, with the help of certain right-wing media revisionists, has tried to rewrite the history of that day. “Instead of calling them criminals, he’s called these insurrectionists ‘patriots.’ ”
He further noted that Trump has refused to denounce political violence.
As for Trump? His rejoinder is this: The last election was stolen from him. And his Capitol-besieging supporters who have been convicted of crimes? They are political hostages who should be released from prison. “The J6 hostages, I call them,” he said during a Friday rally in Iowa. “Nobody has been treated ever in history so badly as those people.”
Trump also accused Biden of “pathetic fear-mongering” and mocked his stutter. As others have observed, he deployed the political equivalent of a grade-school “I know you are but what am I” rejoinder.
Biden says Trump is a threat to democracy? Well, it’s Biden who’s the real threat to democracy, Trump says. Why? Because he, Trump, is being prosecuted by the Department of Justice, in large part over his efforts to overturn the election results.
“They’ve weaponized government, and he’s saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said, adding that “Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”
Trump of course never mentions that the charges against him resulted from an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith. Instead, he acts as though they were ordered by the White House.
He has employed that tried-and-true tactic of demagogues, claiming that he isn’t the true target here. “I’m being indicted for you,” he said during his Iowa tour. “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way.” To which one can only say: What?
For anyone whose memory has grown foggy, an affliction that seems to be besetting some conservatives, let’s review some signal facts. Despite being informed by his top Department of Justice and campaign officials that he had lost a fraud-free election, Trump repeatedly told his supporters he had won in a landslide, only to have his victory stolen from him. After the dozens of lawsuits his team filed pursuant to that assertion went nowhere, Trump called members of his MAGA movement to Washington for Jan. 6, promising them that it would be “wild.”
On Jan. 6, he riled up his supporters and sent the mob to the Capitol, warning that if they didn’t “fight like hell,” they wouldn’t have a country left. Trump apologists like to point out that, earlier in his Ellipse speech, Trump said he knew his supporters would “peacefully” make their voices heard, but anyone evaluating that objectively should recognize several things.
First, Trump always gives himself a verbal escape hatch he can point to later to claim that the message people heard wasn’t what he intended. Second and third, if Trump had told the truth about the election, or even if he had not summoned his supporters to Washington pursuant to that falsehood, the MAGA mob would not have been in a position to storm the Capitol.
Notice this about Trump’s response: Beyond mockery and mendacity, he really hasn’t addressed Biden’s factual charges about his activities leading up to and on Jan. 6. Nor, despite his attempts to rewrite the reality of the melee he fomented, has he issued a strong disavowal of political violence as he campaigns again for president.
We obviously haven’t listened to the last of this argument. Yet what we’ve heard so far is instructive. Biden aimed a truth torpedo directly at Trump. The Republican frontrunner’s only real response was an attempt at misdirection and deflection.
If they were more constitutionally concerned or less cultishly inclined, MAGA would recognize that. That, however, is a monumental if.
But mainstream America should take notice.