From the Liveblog of
Friday, January 5, 2024
Biden accuses Trump of echoing Nazis, kickstarting re-election campaign with speech warning of threat to democracy
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US President Joe Biden accuses Donald Trump of echoing Nazi Germany as he kickstarts his 2024 reelection campaign with a major speech warning of a threat to democracy.
“He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” the 81-year-old Democrat says of his likely Republican rival on the eve of the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol attack.
Biden chooses a symbolic location for the speech near Valley Forge, the historic site where George Washington regrouped American forces during the war of independence nearly 250 years ago.
He says that twice-impeached former president Trump had failed to prevent the Capitol mob assault in 2021, and accused the tycoon and his supporters of still embracing political violence ahead of the 2024 vote.
“He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany,” says Biden, who was greeted by chants from supporters of “four more years.”
“Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” Biden says in the speech in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Biden’s address marks an aggressive start to the year as he either trails or is neck and neck with Trump — the man he beat in 2020 — in recent polls.
The Times of Israel Community.