Biden arrives in France to mark historic 80th D-Day anniversary where he will invoke Ronald Reagan’s cliff top speech and warn about modern threats to democracy before meeting with Zelensky
President Joe Biden arrived in France on Wednesday for a state visit that will include marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day at Normandy and a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
During his trip, Biden will push to deepen transatlantic ties as Russia steps up its attack on Ukraine and the Europe faces elections that could upset the current geopolitical order.
He will make what the White House is billing as a major speech, where he will warn about the threats to democracy and the rise of dictators.
‘It’s going to be action packed and, I think, extremely moving,’ National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, adding that it’s an ‘opportunity for him to say thank you directly to the veterans who saved democracy, saved the free world, and set the stage for the decades of peace and prosperity that followed.’
President Joe Biden arrived in France
During his stop in Normandy, Biden will defend democracy in the same spot Ronald Reagan praised the patriotism of World War II veterans – Pointe du Hoc – trying to invoke the same feelings of patriotism that Reagan inspired in his 14-minute address.
He also will argue against an insolationist strategy, such as the one embraced by his predecessor in office Donald Trump, who is also his rival in the 2024 election.
The White House declined to say if the president will directly call out Trump in his remarks.
Biden will speak to ‘timeless principles, principles that have served as the foundation of American security and American democracy for generations, including the generation that scaled those cliffs, including today’s generation, including the next generation. So he’s going to be speaking in in terms of principles and values and lessons from history that are applicable today,’ Sullivan said.
He arrived in France on Wednesday, wearing his signature aviator sunglasses as he disembarked from Air Force One. He will spend the day in Paris, meeting with staff.
He heads to Normandy on Thursday where he will meet with Zelensky there and again on the sidelines of the G7 in Italy next week.
The meeting comes after Biden approved Ukraine using American-provided weapons in Russia as President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his campaign there.
President Biden was welcomed by France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal
President Joe Biden left for France on Tuesday; Jill Biden is traveling separately
To further make his point about the threats to freedom, Biden will lay a wreath at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Northern France, the same spot Trump refused to visit as president in 2018, claiming the weather wouldn’t allow him to make the stop.
But it was later revealed Trump refused to make the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain and because he did not believe it was important to honor the American war dead, calling them ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’
Biden won’t speak at the cemetery but the picture will be worth a thousand words.
He’ll be more direct in his speech at Pointe du Hoc, which will be direct at Americans, according to the White House, and be a defense of ‘freedom and democracy’ – a message Biden has emphasized in his re-election campaign.
Biden, in his remarks, will talk about how the battle was ‘an existential fight between dictatorship and freedom,’ how the men fighting that day ‘put the country ahead of themselves’ and about ‘the dangers of isolationism,’ Sullivan told reporters.
He added that Biden will ‘be drawing a throughline from World War II through the Cold War and the stand up of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, the NATO alliance, to today, where we face once again war in Europe, where NATO has rallied to defend freedom and sovereignty in Europe.’
Biden will speak in the same spot where Reagan gave his famous The Boys of Pointe du Hoc speech on June 6, 1984 – the 40th anniversary of D-Day. President Biden’s remarks ill come forty years and one day later.
‘These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc,’ Reagan said in one of the most memorable speeches of his presidency.
‘These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.’
Biden also will try to replicate what happened next: Reagan returned to the United States to fight a bitter re-election campaign and win in a landslide.
‘Biden will probably try to hit those same notes that unify everybody,’ James Melville, a former U.S. ambassador to Estonia who spent 34 years working for the State Department, told NBC News. ‘I’m sure the political folks are looking at that [Reagan’s speech] and thinking how do they steal some of that magic.’
President Ronald Reagan gives his famous ‘Boys of Pointe du Hoc’ speech in Normandy on June 6th, 1984 – the 40th anniversary of D-Day
A group of U.S. Army Rangers demonstrate how they climbed a rope ladder up the cliff face at Pointe du Hoc to surprise a Nazi gun position
President Biden left Tuesday night for Paris, heading overseas son Hunter sits in Wilmington, Del., courtroom, fighting federal gun charges.
Their visit comes as Biden is pushing a major ceasefire proposal in the Middle East, which the French are supporting as the Israelis are casting doubt they will support.
And it comes among shift geopolitical politics: the Ukraine still fighting off Russia, China increasing its economic and military and Brexit champion Nigel Farage throwing a wrench in UK politics with his decision to run for prime minister.
Biden faces his own political battle with his 2020 rival as he and Trump vie for a second term in the White House.
The president’s trip is essentially two parts: his visit to Normandy on Thursday and Firday along with a state visit to Paris on Saturday and Sunday.
Biden, 81, was one-year old on D-Day.
The president will honor the ‘service and the sacrifice of American troops in wars overseas,’ White House spokesman John Kirby said in a briefing on Tuesday. ‘Our commitment to honor that sacrifice should never waver.’
As part of their trip, the Bidens will meet with World War II veterans on Thursday in Normandy when they mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when allied forces launched the largest-ever land, sea and air armada that would result in Adolf Hitler’s downfall 11 months later.
‘He looks forward to paying respects to all of them,’ Kirby said.
Veterans have already begun arriving in France. About 60 from America will attend.
Biden will be joined by 25 heads of state and government, including French President Emmanuel Macron, King Charles, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
102-year-old World War II veteran Gene Kleindl, from Rockford, Illinois, greets visitors at the Normandy American Cemetery; Kleindl, a medic in the U.S. Army, arrived on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day +2
Sergeant Ben Beale, with veterans Jack Mortimer, John Life, Corporal Aaron Stone, veteran Donald Jones, Corporal Paul Squires, and veteran Peter Newton, as the veterans return to Sword Beach in Normandy, France, after landing there on D-Day
Six U.S. A-20 bombers fly about the beaches at Normandy in May 1944
The president will return to Normandy on Friday to speak about the importance of democracy, a topic he has emphasized repeatedly during his campaign for a second term in the White House.
‘He will take full advantage of the opportunity to talk about the moment we’re living in the importance of democracies working together on behalf of peoples, but also the importance of American leadership,’ Kirby said.
Biden repeatedly has called his Trump, his Republican rival, a ‘threat to democracy.’
The president spoke about his France trip when he appealed to donors at a closed-door fundraiser in Greenwich, Conn., on Monday night.
‘Democracy is literally on the ballot this year,’ he said.
And he repeated his previous criticism of Trump for calling soldiers ‘losers and suckers.’
‘Losers and suckers! Who in the hell does he think he is?’ he said in a raised voice.
And he noted of Trump: ‘This guy does not deserve to be president whether or not I’m running.’
Biden was referring to the Trump’s visit to France in November 2018 and how he skipped a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, blaming the rainy, foggy weather.
But the Atlantic, citing multiple sources, revealed Trump said: ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers’ and referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.
The former president has contested the account, saying the Secret Service refused to let him make the stop due to the bad weather. There was fog and heavy rain over the cemetery, and the White House, at the time, said there was not time to organize French security to cover a long motorcade route. Trump had been scheduled to fly there on Marine One.
Later, Trump’s then-chief of staff, John Kelly, has gone on the record to say those were Trump’s words. Kelly is a retired U.S. Marine Corps general who lost his son in Afghanistan.
Biden has railed against Trump repeatedly about the incident and contrasts it to the service of his late-son Beau Biden. Beau served in the Iraq as part of the Delaware National Guard. He died in 2015 of brain cancer, which the president attributes to Beau being stationed near burn pits.
The cemetery holds the remains of American forces, who, in World War I, helped other allied troops stop the German advance toward Paris in the spring of 1918.
The American flag flies at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery dedicated to the U.S. soldiers killed in the Belleau Wood battle during World War One
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes then-President Donald Trump to France on November 10, 2018
President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, walk through a World War II cemetery near Omaha Beach on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day in June 1984
But, in his remarks, Biden will be looking to court the same voters who helped propel Reagan to the White House, blue-collar working class whites.
They make up part of what his re-election campaign calls the ‘blue wall’ – the older, whiter states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Biden and Trump are running competitively in the three Midwest states – both campaigns need to win them in order to win the White House.
After his speech to Americans on Friday, June 7th, Biden will return to Paris for the state visit.
On Saturday, he’ll have a traditional state visit with French President Emmanuel Macron, who Biden hosted for his first state dinner in December 2022.
The official visit will begin with an arrival ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe, which will include a wreath laying, troop review and a parade procession of thousands of troops (some on horseback) down the Champs-Élysée.
He and Macron will meet at the Élysée Palace and later in the evening the first couple will attend a formal, black-tie state dinner.
In their talks, two Presidents will discuss their ongoing support for Ukraine, as well as ways to strengthen bi-lateral cooperation on economic, space and nuclear issues, the French said.
Macron and his wife Brigitte went on a state visit to the U.S. in Dec. 2022.
Biden will return to the United States on Sunday. Next week, he’ll turn around and return to Europe on Thursday, where he will attend a G7 meeting in Italy.
