US President Joe Biden launched his harshest attack yet on former US president Donald Trump as he started his re-election campaign on Friday, accusing the Republican of echoing Nazi Germany and posing a threat to democracy.
The 81-year-old Democrat branded his likely challenger in November a “loser” and “sick” in a speech on the eve of the third anniversary of the deadly Jan. 6 US Capitol attack by pro-Trump supporters.
“He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” Biden told supporters, alternating between whispers and furious shouts as he laid into the man he beat in 2020.
Photo: AFP
Not only had the twice-impeached former president instigated the Capitol attack, but the tycoon and his followers were still embracing “political violence” ahead of November vote, Biden said.
“He calls those who oppose him vermin. He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany,” he added.
He portrayed himself as a defender of the US’ institutions, saying that if Trump won a second term in the White House then democracy itself was at risk.
“Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future,” Biden said.
He accused Trump of being “sick” by laughing at a hammer attack on the husband of former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, and called him a “loser” over the US presidential election in 2020.
The Trump campaign swiftly hit back.
“Biden is the real threat to democracy by weaponizing the government to go after his main political opponent and interfering in the 2024 election,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said.
The former president, himself on the campaign trail, added that Biden was “fearmongering.”
“Biden’s record is an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure... That’s why Crooked Joe is staging a pathetic, fearmongering campaign event in Pennsylvania today,” Trump told supporters in Sioux Center, Iowa.
Trump was impeached but acquitted over the Jan. 6 riots. The 77-year-old now faces a criminal trial on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election.
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