On January 5, Joe Biden delivered the opening speech of his re-election campaign near Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. As was expected, it was a rambling diatribe that focused on his predecessor and potential successor, Donald Trump, and the supposed threat to democracy he poses. Biden made several questionable statements but, most notably, he became the first White House incumbent in living memory to give a campaign speech that did not include any reference to his own performance or record so far.
On October 28, 1980, during the single presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and then-President Jimmy Carter, the Republican challenger posed to the American people a pivotal question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Joe Biden couldn’t ask Americans if they are better off now than they were three years ago because every reasonable person knows the honest answer.
Donald Trump (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Without a single success to cite – unless one counts a couple of massive spending bills that have achieved very little – Biden begged, scolded, and lectured his audience to scattered and half-hearted applause.
The theme was democracy and how it would be lost if Trump were to again win the White House. The site of the Continental Army’s 1777 winter encampment was intended to be symbolic. It seems that Joe Biden was likening himself to General George Washington, preparing for battle against a tyrant’s army – presumably Donald Trump and his supporters.
Early in his address, the chief executive described democracy as “America’s sacred cause,” which is not at all accurate – either from a historical or a contemporary perspective. The sacred cause of the American revolutionaries was not democracy but self-rule and freedom from tyranny. The US has been a constitutional federal republic ever since – not a democracy.
Joe Biden Gets All the Pinocchios
Almost immediately, Biden stated something else that isn’t true. Referring to the events of January 6, 2021, in the nation’s capital, he claimed to have “attended the funerals of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day.” This couldn’t possibly have happened because there is no evidence that any police officers were killed or mortally injured during the “Stop the Steal” protest in Washington, DC. He claimed that Trump “did nothing” and refused to tell protesters to stand down, as well, which is also inaccurate.
Perhaps even more incredibly, Biden claimed that the man who entered former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home in 2022 and assaulted her husband with a hammer had been “whipped up” by Trump’s “lies.” That allegation has absolutely no basis in truth. One only needs to consider that if Pelosi’s attacker had been a self-proclaimed Trump supporter, the left-wing media would have reported the fact repeatedly and probably with no small amount of glee.
The lies continued, one after the other. According to Joe Biden, Trump posted on the Truth Social platform that he would terminate the Constitution. In fact, in 2022, Trump wrote that the results of the 2020 election should be thrown out because: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Clearly, then, the former president was pointing out the threat to America’s founding document and most sacred laws. It would seem the leftist media – and Mr. Biden – chose to deliberately misinterpret Trump’s words.
Biden’s rant about his leading challenger, as devoid as it was of accurate facts, went on for more than half of the 33-minute speech. What followed was a lot of tepid fearmongering about how the 2024 election is about protecting American democracy. At least one can say that Joe Biden didn’t falsely claim he successfully handled the economy, border security, unemployment, or foreign policy. None of those subjects were mentioned.
Assuming that he will indeed be facing Trump in November of 2024, Joe Biden must hope that the voters agree with him about democracy being on the ballot. He cannot ask them Reagan’s famous question because their answer would almost certainly end his already lengthy political career.
