(Cedar Rapids) Former US President Donald Trump on Saturday attempted to turn the tables on his likely rival in November, President Joe Biden, arguing that the man whose election victory Mr Trump was trying to overturn was “the destroyer of American democracy.
Donald Trump’s allegations against Joe Biden, a Democrat, echo those Mr. Biden has made for years against his predecessor. As Donald Trump dominated the Republican presidential primary and talked about targeting his rivals and the media if he wins the White House again, Mr Biden stepped up his own warnings, saying Donald Trump is “determined to destroy the American democracy.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump made his most explicit argument yet about why voters should instead view his rival as the greatest democratic threat. Mr. Trump reiterated his long-standing claim that the four criminal indictments against him show that Mr. Biden is misusing the federal justice system against his rival.
“He has used the government as a weapon against his political opponents like a third world political tyrant,” Donald Trump told a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mr. Biden and his radical left allies like to present themselves as allies of democracy, he continued, asserting that “Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. ”
PHOTO STEPHANIE SCARBROUGH, ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Joe Biden
Mr. Biden’s campaign spokesman, Ammar Moussa, responded: “The United States of Donald Trump in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock down his political enemies. You don’t have to take our word for it — Mr. Trump admitted as much himself. »
Donald Trump has long vowed to pursue Mr. Biden in retaliation if he returns to the White House.
On Saturday, however, the former president extended his arguments about Mr. Biden’s threat to democracy to lawsuits filed by two liberal organizations seeking to make him ineligible under a Civil War-era constitutional provision, rarely used, which prohibits those who have “engaged in the insurrection” from returning to office.
So far, all prosecutions have failed. Mr. Biden is not involved in it, but Democratic donors who support him also help fund liberal groups that file these claims. That led Mr. Trump to blame them on the president, who he said had “degraded the Constitution” by trying to block him.
And the former president, who has long spoken openly about authoritarian leaders and sometimes echoed their rhetoric, seemed aware of the criticism against him. “Americans don’t like fascists,” Mr. Trump said. He praised Chinese President Xi Jinping and China’s criminal justice system for quickly executing drug traffickers, and boasted that North Korean President Kim Jong-un likes him.
PHOTO GEOFF STELLFOX, THE GAZETTE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump before a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on December 2
But Mr. Trump noted that he was often attacked because of those relationships and tried to defend them.
It’s good to have good relations with people who have nuclear weapons.
Donald Trump
Throughout his speech, Donald Trump repeated his arguments that the 2020 presidential election he lost was “stolen” and that U.S. elections in general were “rigged.” There is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Dozens of lawsuits have been thrown out by the courts and the government, and independent reviews have not found enough alleged fraud to call the outcome into question.
Supporters of Mr. Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to prevent the certification of Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden. On Saturday, Mr. Trump continued to refer to some of those arrested in connection with the riots as “political prisoners.”
Earlier in the day, at a rally in Ankeny, Iowa, Donald Trump returned to allegations of Democratic voter fraud, one of his favorite themes on the campaign trail. He asked the crowd to “protect the vote” in 2024, and focused on various cities that he has often denigrated as examples of places where fraud could occur.
“You should go to Detroit and you should go to Philadelphia and you should go to some of these places, Atlanta, and […] we need to watch those votes when they come in,” Mr. Trump told his supporters.