Trump’s defense claiming he is anti-democratic? Blame Biden for it

Former President Donald J. Trump, who has been charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with a plot to overturn the 2020 election, repeatedly claimed to supporters in Iowa on Saturday that it was President Biden who committed a serious threatened American democracy.

While Mr. Trump shattered democratic norms during his presidency and faced voter concerns that he would do so again in a second term, the former president in his speech repeatedly accused Mr. Biden of corrupting politics and waging a repressive ‘total war’. on America.

“Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy,” he said. “Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”

Mr. Trump has made similar attacks on Mr. Biden a staple of his speeches in Iowa and elsewhere. He regularly accuses the president broadly of corruption and of weaponizing the Justice Department to influence the 2024 elections.

But in his second of two speeches in Iowa on Saturday, delivered in a community college gymnasium in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Trump sharpened that line of attack, suggesting a more concerted effort by his campaign to defend against accusations that Mr. Trump has an anti-political attitude. democratic tendency – by going on the attack.

Polls have shown that significant percentages of voters in both parties are concerned about threats to democracy. During the midterm elections, candidates who embraced Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him were defeated, even in races where voters did not consider “democracy” a top priority.

Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign has repeatedly attacked Mr. Trump along those lines. In recent weeks, Biden aides and allies have drawn attention to news reports of plans made by Mr. Trump and his allies that would undermine central elements of American democracy, governance and the rule of law.

Mr. Trump and his campaign have tried to dismiss such concerns as a fabrication to scare voters. But on Saturday they tried to roll back the Biden campaign’s arguments against the president.

At the Cedar Rapids event, aides and volunteers left signs with bold black-and-white letters reading “Biden Attacks Democracy” on the seats and bleachers. At the start of Trump’s speech, that message was broadcast on a screen above the stage.

Mr. Trump has a history of accusing his opponents of behavior of which he himself is guilty, the political equivalent of a “No, you are” response on the playground. In a 2016 debate, when Hillary Clinton accused Mr. Trump of being a Russian puppet, Mr. Trump fired back with “You are the puppet,” a comment he never explained.

Mr. Trump’s accusations against Mr. Biden, which he referred to repeatedly during his speech, veered toward conspiratorial intent. He alleged that the president and his allies were trying to control America’s speech, their behavior on social media and their purchases of cars and dishwashers.

Without evidence, he accused Mr. Biden of being behind a nationwide effort to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot in several states. And, as he has done before, he claimed, again without evidence, that Mr. Biden was the mastermind behind the four criminal cases against him.

Here too, Trump conjured up a nefarious-sounding presidential conspiracy, a conspiracy with dark consequences for ordinary Americans, and not just for the former president being prosecuted. Mr. Biden and his allies “think they can do whatever they want,” Mr. Trump said — “break every law, tell every lie, ruin every life, destroy every norm and get away with whatever they want.” Everything they want.”

Democrats suggested the former president was projecting again.

“Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one in which the government is his personal weapon to lock down his political enemies,” Ammar Moussa, spokesman for Biden’s reelection campaign, said in a statement. “Don’t take our word for it – Trump himself admitted it.”

While insisting that Mr. Biden threatens democracy, Mr. Trump underscored his most anti-democratic campaign themes.

After saying he would use the Justice Department to ‘go after the Biden family,’ On Saturday, he vowed to “investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist and inverse enforcement of the law.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced the cases brought against him by black prosecutors in New York and Atlanta as racist. (He does not apply this charge to the white special prosecutor in his two federal criminal cases, whom he instead calls “deranged.”)

Yet Mr. Trump himself has a history of racist statements.

At an earlier event on Saturday, where he sought to undermine confidence in election integrity well before the 2024 election, he urged supporters in Ankeny, a predominantly white suburb of Des Moines, to rally next year in Detroit, Philadelphia , to take a closer look at the election results. and Atlanta, three cities with large black populations on the move, say he lost in 2020.

“You should go to some of these places, and we should keep an eye on those votes as they come in,” Trump said. “When they’re, you know, being pushed around in wheelbarrows and dumped on the ground and everyone’s like, ‘What’s going on?’

“We are like a third world country,” he added.

Trump’s speeches on Saturday reflected how sharply he is focused on the general election rather than the Republican primaries, in which he has a commanding lead.

With just over six weeks to go until the Iowa caucus, Trump dismissed his Republican rivals, mocking them for polling far behind him and denouncing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as disloyal for deciding to run against him.

He also attacked Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for supporting Mr. DeSantis and suggesting her popularity had fallen after she rejected Mr. Trump.

“You know, we had a problem with your governor,” Mr. Trump said, prompting a chorus of boos.

Ann Hinga Klein contributed reporting from Ankeny, Iowa, and Maggie Haberman From New York.