US President Joe Biden claimed Republican allies of former US President Donald Trump are undermining the country's democracy, urging voters on Thursday to reject extremism ahead of November's midterm elections.
Biden 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 "determined to take this country backwards" to a time without rights to abortion, privacy, contraception or same-sex marriage.
"Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said. "As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise."
The president delivered his speech on Thursday night from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the US Declaration of Independence was signed. He picked up his 2020 campaign theme of restoring the "soul of America."
He cited the “extraordinary experiment of self-government” represented by the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, saying that “history tells us a blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.”
“History tells us a blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.”
President Joe Biden
The president was interrupted by protesters who chanted “Let’s go Brandon,” a reference to a crude epithet aimed at Biden that is popular among Trump’s supporters. At one point, the president joked that “good manners is nothing they ever suffered from,” but he also defended their right to protest, saying “they’re entitled to be outrageous.”
After spending much of 2022 trying to combat high inflation at home and Russia's invasion of Ukraine – and enduring two bouts of COVID-19 over the summer – he has in recent days repeatedly lashed out at Trump-aligned Republicans.
Biden was specific about the threats inside America’s borders, saying that his political rivals had formed a party of extremism, threatening the democratic traditions debated and adopted at Independence Hall almost 250 years ago.
Biden had been planning the speech since early this summer, a Democratic official told The New York Times. The official, who asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations with the president, said that Biden had been concerned that the forces animating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol last year are not fading away.
Recently, however, the president grew more motivated to deliver it because of persistent, false claims of election fraud as voters prepare to go to the polls for the midterms, a White House official said.
In several recent speeches, Biden has replaced his usual calls for unity with sharp condemnations of “MAGA extremists,” saying Republicans have embraced “semi-fascism.”
His remarks on Thursday denouncing political violence and urging bipartisan compromise came after speeches in recent days where he condemned MAGA philosophy as "semi-fascism" and assailed Republican threats against the FBI after a search of Trump's Florida home as "sickening."
Republicans respond to Biden's speech
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, said it was Democrats who were “dismantling Americans’ democracy before our very eyes.”
"Instead of trying to bring our country together to solve these challenges, President Biden has chosen to divide, demean and disparage his fellow Americans," McCarthy said in Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. "Why? Simply because they disagree with his policies."
After the speech, Republicans said Biden was maligning the 74 million people who voted for Trump in the 2020 election.
“Joe Biden is the divider in chief and epitomizes the current state of the Democrat Party,” said Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee – "one of divisiveness, disgust and hostility towards half the country.”
Reuters contributed to this report.