Biden calling Trump ‘threat to democracy’ shows deep divisions

By calling former US president Donald Trump and his allies a threat to US democracy, US President Joe Biden urged American voters to reject “extremism” ahead of midterm elections.

While delivering a speech at the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on Thursday, Biden stepped up attacks on conservatives and said “too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” US media outlets reported.

Biden also accused lawmakers and others devoted to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda led by Trump as being willing to overturn democratic elections, ignore the Constitution and be “determined to take this country backwards” to a time without rights to abortion, privacy or contraception .

Soon after Biden’s speech, Trump responded, saying “…he [Biden] threatened America, including with the possible use of military force. He must be insane, or suffering from late stage dementia,” according to media reports.

Given the current chaos in the US, we can see that the checks and balances in “American-style democracy” have resulted in a “vetocracy.” Elections this year and in 2024 could be the most dramatic ones in terms of US politics we have observed for many years, Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times.

Analysts noted that deep divisions in the US are hard to fix and as the two parties are working even harder to win more votes, there will be more clashes and frictions in the US.

Moreover, the international community should also be vigilant as the US government always tends to transfer its domestic conflicts to other countries by stirring up trouble globally.