WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden took aim at hardcore supporters of former President Donald Trump Thursday and accused them of taking America “backwards” by undermining basic freedoms.
The speech comes at a time when Biden seeks to seize political momentum in a national address ahead of key midterm elections.
In excerpts of the primetime speech Biden delivered in Philadelphia, the cradle of U.S. democracy, the president called out the “MAGA” Republicans who embrace Trump’s “Make America Great Again” ideology.
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards,” the 79-year-old leader charged. “Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
Biden’s speech – set for 8 p.m. (12 a.m. GMT) – took place near the building where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were adopted more than two centuries ago. With control of Congress for the remainder of his first term in the balance in November’s elections, Biden did not mince his words in what was billed as an address on the “battle for the Soul of the Nation.” “Tonight I have come here to the place where it all began to speak plainly to the nation about the threats we face,” Biden said, according to speech excerpts.
“For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it is not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us.” But the president also sought to strike an optimistic note, speaking of the “power we have in our own hands to meet those threats” and the “incredible future that lies in front of us if only we choose it.” The theme of Biden’s speech harked back to an article he published in The Atlantic magazine in 2017, after a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that he says spurred his presidential run.
“We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation,” Biden wrote then.
After his election in 2020, the veteran politician initially planned to wage this battle through dialogue with moderate Republican lawmakers, and through economic and social policies aimed at the middle class. –Agencies
