By Mayank Chhaya –
What President Joe Biden left unsaid after “What a sick….” referring to former President Donald Trump during a particularly stinging speech on the eve of the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection made it even more powerful.
“What a sick….My God,” Biden said of Trump while talking about the way the former president and his MAGA supporters laugh talking about political violence.
“You know, Trump and his MAGA supporters not only embrace political violence, but they laugh about it. At his rally, he jokes about an intruder, whipped up by the Big Trump Lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull and echoing the very same words used on January 6th: “Where’s Nancy?” And he thinks that’s funny. He laughed about it,” Biden said before his now famous half-articulated castigation.
The January 5 speech, where Biden deliberately chose to explicitly name Trump unlike his previous similar speeches, signaled the broad intent of his second presidential campaign. Clearly, he has decided to make the threat to American democracy from Trump and its preservation by all those who believe in it as its central theme. It is a powerful theme but paradoxically it has the exact opposite effect on those firmly in Trump’s camp—they feel galvanized by any and all attacks on his from Biden and others.
The speech zeroed in on this theme when the president said, “Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future. He’s being straightforward. He’s not hiding the ball. His first rally for the 2024 campaign opened with a choir of January 6th insurrectionists singing from prison on a cell phone while images of the January 6th riot played on a big screen behind him at his rally.
Can you believe that? This is like something out of a fairy tale — a bad fairy tale. Trump began his 2024 campaign by glorifying the failed violent insurrection on our Capitol.”
To those outside America watching its democracy’s dangerous slide since the rise of Trump in 2016, especially as articulated by Biden and others, ought to be a stunning development even though within the country it has become just another day.
Biden specifically referred to what Trump has said what he thinks of the Constitution by calling for “termination of all the rules, regulation, and articles, even those found in the U.S. Constitution.” These words were heard around the world, in countries to whom Washington has been known to hector and sermonize about democracy.
“We will defend the truth, not give in to the Big Lie. We’ll embrace the Constitution and the Declaration, not abandon it. We’ll honor the sacred cause of democracy, not walk away from it. Today, I make this sacred pledge to you. The defense, protection, and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency,” he said almost as if he was also addressing the rest of the world which might have become skeptical given the continuing sway of Trump over nearly half of America.
Biden said, “Unlike other nations on Earth, America is not built on ethnicity, religion, geography. We’re the only nation in the history of the world built on an idea — not hyperbole — built on an idea: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.” That Biden intended his speech as for domestic consumption as for the rest of the world was clear in these remarks.
“I tell you from my experience working with leaders around the world — and I mean this sincerely, not a joke — that America is still viewed as the beacon of democracy for the world. I can’t tell you how many — how many world leaders — and I know all of them, virtually all of them — grab my arm in private and say, “He can’t win. Tell me. No, my country will be at risk,” he said.
The speech was unlike any in the sense that while very much being a campaign starter it was equally meant for those not just in the country but around the world who have watched on askance at the cavalier way Trump has not only persisted with his flagrant lies but even stretched to absurd lengths.
There is no expectation that he will become reasonable once and if he wins the Republican nomination. In fact, the apprehension is precisely to the contrary since the nomination will only reaffirm his faith in his increasingly unhinged ideas.
