Weeks before the 2022 midterms, Joe Biden gave a memorable speech in front of Independence Hall. The setting could not have been a more ironic – or disturbing – choice for the content of Biden’s unusually authoritarian remarks. Trump and his movement, he said, represent a threat to “the very foundations of our Republic.” The visuals were likewise ominous: this was a campaign speech, but Biden was flanked by U.S. Marines as he thundered against his political opponents as if they were a foreign enemy.
Since that speech, Biden’s approval ratings have not improved, and he has only grown more reliant on sweeping, demagogic themes. His feeble efforts to sell the country on “Bidenomics” are not working. Americans know that they are not prospering. They see the world is growing more unstable. Biden can’t run for re-election on what he has done; he has no alternative but to rile up fears of Donald Trump.
At a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids on Saturday, Trump hit Biden where it hurts. Biden and his allies “like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump said, referencing Biden’s notorious blood-red speech in Philadelphia. But the opposite is true: Biden is the “destroyer of American democracy,” Trump said. Like a “Third World communist tyrant,” Biden “has been weaponizing government against his political opponents.”
The Biden campaign shrieked: “Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies.”
Imagine that? A government that locks up political enemies?
Biden’s sycophants in the mass media likewise went ballistic over Trump’s comments. What does Trump think he is doing, calling Biden a threat to democracy? Doesn’t he know that only Biden is allowed to make those accusations?
But Trump’s argument is more convincing than ever, for at least two reasons.
The first, as Trump mentioned, is Biden’s use of the justice system as a cudgel to take Trump out of contention. Biden’s screeching about “our democracy” would be less absurd if Biden were not actively trying to jail his main political opponent. Biden’s defenders insist he has no connection whatsoever to the scorched-earth legal crusade against Trump, but this is not convincing to those who are not already committed partisans of the left.
No one really believes that these cases would have been brought against Trump if he were not running for office again. Each one of them is based on gross distortions of fact and law.
The likes of Jack Smith, Tanya Chutkan, Letitia James, and Arthur Engoron – Democrats all – have shown they will stop at nothing to destroy Biden’s chief electoral opponent, democracy be damned. Just in case prosecuting Trump does not do the trick, the left is trying to block Trump from the ballot – to save democracy, of course, from the nightmare scenario of Trump winning a popular election.
Beyond Trump, the Justice Department has become obsessed with policing the MAGA movement. According to Newsweek, the FBI is ramping up its targeting of Trump supporters ahead of 2024, even dedicating a special category to tracking them. This is the “domestic extremism” that Biden has spent so much time raving about.
A senior intelligence official told Newsweek, “We’ve crossed the Rubicon.”
Meanwhile, in the name of fighting “disinformation,” the White House has conspired with social media companies to monitor and block speech about contentious topics like the 2020 election – the most secure election in history, of course.
The second arm of Biden’s war on democracy has to do with immigration.
The so-called “Biden border crisis” is a deliberate calculation to subvert the sovereignty of the people and the laws of the United States. There is no other explanation for Biden’s refusal to police the southern border, which has unleashed a historic invasion contrary to the Constitution and the will of the people.
Biden’s invasion is rapidly reshaping the country, and if it is not stopped, the first words of the Constitution, “we the people of the United States,” will soon cease to have any meaning.
Other presidents have been more transformative legislators: Biden doesn’t have any law or program to point to like Social Security or the Great Society. Even still, Biden has done more to undermine the rule of law and shatter democratic norms than any president before him.
The good news is that Biden’s arrogant and ridiculous attempt to claim “democracy” for himself does not seem to be working. Trump is gaining momentum: if the election were held today he would win. And Trump’s populist pitch will resonate louder as Biden becomes even more desperate and heavy-handed in his campaign to save “our democracy” from the people who live in it.