A reminder of the past confrontation, perhaps the foreshadowing of the one to come: Joe Biden and Donald Trump will each speak on Thursday, a year after the January 6 assault on the Capitol, to deliver two visions more irreconcilable than ever .
The former Republican president was the first to let it be known that he would give a press conference from his luxurious property in Florida.
And he had written: “In the meantime, remember that the insurrection took place on November 3”, the day of the presidential election, which the Republican claims, without the slightest proof, to have won. According to the polls, a majority of Republican sympathizers are also convinced.
Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 election by more than seven million votes to Democrat Joe Biden, therefore has no intention of keeping a low profile, despite the ongoing parliamentary inquiry into his role and that of his relatives in this assault which shocked America.
On the contrary, the former president is now keen to make room in his party, by excluding those who do not adhere to his speech of a stolen election.
“Trump’s behavior is arguably unprecedented in American history. No former president has so tried to discredit his successor and the democratic process, ”said Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond.
What will Joe Biden, who will speak Thursday from Capitol Hill, be able to answer, even where thousands of supporters of his Republican opponent have tried to prevent the US Congress from certifying his election?
The president repeats that American democracy is at an “inflection point”, and assures us that he, Joe Biden, can save it.
Since his election, he has been loath to face the “other guy” or “the guy from before” head-on – the formulations used by the president and by the White House, especially not to name the one that, perhaps, it will be necessary to face again in the 2024 presidential election.
Officially, Joe Biden intends to represent himself, and the Republican, he suggests that he is thinking about it.
For Lara Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University, “President and Vice President (Kamala) Harris cannot go on this ground” of direct verbal attack “because they do not want to give. the impression of a witch hunt ”orchestrated from the White House, to use an expression dear to Donald Trump.
“Naivete”
“The Biden administration thought that by making good political decisions, all of this would go away, but I think that is naivety,” she adds.
According to Joe Biden, the best way to counter Donald Trump would be to reconcile the American middle class with representative democracy, by guaranteeing it jobs, purchasing power and a certain serenity in the face of globalization.
But the president is struggling to deliver the expected results: the United States is suffering with immense weariness a new wave of the pandemic, its major social reforms are blocked in Congress, the cost of living is increasing …
Rachel Bitecofer, a strategist close to the Democratic camp, thinks Joe Biden should face the former businessman and the Republican Party more harshly.
Faced with a Donald Trump who has just supported, by way of a press release, the ultra-conservative Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, “we must be very frank about what that means”, she judges.
It is, according to Rachel Bitecofer, a way for the former president “to signal what he wants for America and it is not a democratic future”.
But, she laments, “there is a real reluctance to admit how virulent the right-wing attack on democracy is”.
“The current threats against democracy are real and worrying,” Judge Carl Tobias. He believes, however, that “the United States overcame much more dangerous crises, in particular the Civil War.”