President Biden laments Trump’s ‘assault on democracy,’ in fiery speech after Valley Forge visit

President Joe Biden framed his reelection bid as a “sacred cause,” to save democracy, striking one of the most urgent notes of his 2024 campaign as he compared his position to General George Washington ushering troops through the winter at Valley Forge in their battle for freedom nearly 250 years ago.

Biden used the timing of the address — a day before the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — to call out extremism and frame the race as a battle for basic freedoms and one to protect democracy.

He called Jan. 6 “a day forever seared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America, lost it at all.” He drew a contrast between Washington’s decision to leave office “at the height of his power” with former President Donald Trump’s failed attempt to remain in office after his electoral defeat.

“Trump’s assault on Democracy isn’t just part of his past,” Biden said. “It’s what he’s promising for the future. He’s being straightforward. He’s not hiding the ball.”

The speech at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell was heavy-on-history and often foreboding in its retelling of the Capitol attack and Trump’s alleged role in inciting it. The president sought to raise the stakes for democracy on the ballot this year.

And it was a more forceful denunciation of Trump than Biden has delivered so far this election cycle. While he’s criticized Trump at fund-raisers and in campaign events before, his tone was notably sharper, more offended.

”What a sick —,” Biden said, catching himself before cursing, as he recounted a speech in which Trump mocked a violent attack on U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband. “I think he’s despicable, seriously.”

Biden made no mention of the possibility of another opponent though the November election is more than 300 days away and Republican voters begin the process of picking their candidate in Iowa Jan. 15. The caucus will be an early test of Trump’s hold on the GOP base.

And while the speech was heavily focused on Trump, he avoided any mention of the 91 felony counts the former president is facing or the challenges to his ability to appear on state primary ballots.

Before the speech, the president and first lady visited the site of Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge, where they toured the founding father’s small stone headquarters and participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Memorial Arch.

A park ranger showed the couple the inscription on the arch, a quote from a letter by Washington that reads “naked and starving as they are we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery.”

Biden has repeatedly chosen the Philadelphia region as the backdrop for big speeches related to threats to democracy as he seeks to win the critical battleground again this year. Montgomery County, where first lady Jill Biden grew up, is part of a swath of blue suburbs that Democrats hope will help propel them to victory again in 2024.

The speech in the key county kicked off what the campaign has touted as an aggressive January and February schedule for the 81-year-old president, who will give a second speech Monday in Charleston, S.C., at a historic church that was the site of a mass shooting in 2015.

Trump is spending the anniversary of Jan. 6 in Iowa, where he has a string of events planned.

“Our country’s going to hell. You don’t mind me using that horrible word, don’t you?” he said from Iowa on Friday, just hours after Biden’s speech. “We have a man who’s grossly incompetent dealing with nuclear war.”

His campaign released a new TV ad on the day of Biden’s speech slamming the president on the economy, a polling weakness for Biden, who made no mention of his legislative record on stage Friday.

“The soul of America has been crushed under the weight of Joe Biden’s failures,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Rachel Lee said. “While families can’t pay their bills, children are dying from fentanyl overdoses, terror suspects are crossing the open southern border, and Americans are still being held hostage by Hamas, Biden wants to further divide Americans with polarizing rhetoric to distract from his catastrophic policies.”

Both men have continued to talk about Jan. 6 but in very different ways.

Trump has praised people convicted of attacking the Capitol, describing them as victims of political persecution. An early rally featured footage from the day and a Jan. 6 prison choir. He’s compared their situation to the legal cases against him which he argues are the result of antidemocratic attacks from political opponents.

Biden is conversely pinning his hopes of uniting his party in large part around anger over Jan. 6 and what the day has come to symbolize. He made it the subject of a 60-second TV spot out this week in Pennsylvania and other battleground states. And in his speech on Friday, he noted that more than 140 police officers were injured that day and that the Justice Department has secured hundreds of convictions against rioters.

“You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American,” Biden said of Trump.

He blasted Republican officials for changing their tone about Jan. 6, saying they had “made their choice.” And he added, “Now the rest of us, Democrats, independents and mainstream Republicans, we have to make ours.”

Some recent polling suggests a growing number of Republican voters are less inclined to blame Trump for the attack on the Capitol. Trump’s GOP primary opponents have said they’d pardon people convicted of crimes related to the attack, if elected and that they’d pardon Trump if he’s convicted in any of the cases he’s facing.

Biden’s popularity among Black, Hispanic, and younger voters has declined compared to 2020 and he’s facing a rift within his own party on the war between Israel and Hamas.

A group of about 35 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside of Biden’s speech Friday, calling on the president to support a cease-fire in Gaza.

But Biden had already won over the crowd of invited guests in heavily Democratic Montgomery County. The Philadelphia suburbs delivered big numbers for him in 2020, which he’ll need again — along with gains in other parts of the state and among demographics where polls show he’s losing support.

Part of the strategy is to highlight remarks Trump makes that might otherwise fly under the radar — particularly anti-immigrant tirades or when he has compared himself to dictators. And Biden’s speech included frequent quotes and mentions of some of Trump’s most controversial comments.

“Look at the authoritarian leaders and dictators he says he admires,” Biden said. “I won’t walk through them all it would take too long.”

Attendees said the stake Biden laid out resonated.

“Donald Trump has a very real chance of winning, and it’s going to take every single person coming out and voting, whether we are in love with Joe Biden, or we’re settling,” said Hans van Mol, president of the Pennsylvania Young Democrats.

State Sen. Maria Collett, who represents the 12th District, which includes the community college venue, said her biggest fear surrounding another Trump win would be that he would put people who don’t agree with him in peril.

”We have heard Donald Trump threaten violence against people that are not supporters of his. I believe it to be true,” she said. “And I think that we are not just in the fight for democracy, we are in the fight for the goodness and the soul of our country.”

Staff writer Jesse Bunch contributed to this article.