Biden to highlight Trump’s danger to democracy at Valley Forge

President Joe Biden’s speech on Friday will focus on how former president Donald Trump is an ongoing threat to American democracy. 

President Joe Biden will travel to Valley Forge in Montgomery County on Friday and remind voters of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and the ongoing threat he presents to American democracy. 

The former president has ramped up his anti-immigration, pro-authoritarian rhetoric in recent weeks, saying that he would be a dictator for his first day back in office and claiming that immigrants are poisoning the “blood of our nation,” which echoes rhetoric used by former Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler. 

The speech was originally scheduled for Saturday, which marks three years since the violent attack on the US Capitol, but was pushed forward to Friday due to an incoming winter storm, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“The choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez said on a call with reporters Tuesday. “The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedoms.” 

The Inquirer states that Friday’s speech will have similar themes to Biden’s prime-time speech outside Independence Hall in September 2022. That speech focused on “the soul of the nation,” and the consequences of the midterm elections. 

Friday’s trip to the Philadelphia suburbs will be Biden’s first trip to the region in 2024. He visited the City of Brotherly Love nine times in 2023 and has made 17 trips to the Philadelphia area since getting elected in 2021.

After the 2020 presidential election, Pennsylvania was rife with lies and disinformation questioning the validity of the results,  thanks to Trump and his allies like Congressman Scott Perry, State Sen. Doug Mastriano, and other Republican legislators. 

85 Pennsylvanians have been charged for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the commonwealth ranks third in the country for the total number of residents charged with crimes related to Jan. 6, 2021 according to Stacker.