A reluctant Biden is called upon to confront Trump

It might not be the battle you were looking for, but President Joe Biden is called to face Donald Trump.

Biden volunteered as the guardian of American democracy in a visceral speech Thursday in which he addressed the horrors of the assault on the Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, intended to overturn his 2020 election victory.

The refusal of Trump To accept the reality of his defeat, he unleashed a conspiracy that was about to destroy the United States system of government and that, a year later, continues to affect society.

“I didn’t look for this fight, which was brought to this Capitol today a year ago, but I’m not going to shy away from it either.”Biden declared in his 25-minute speech from Statuary Hall, where the agitators had wandered a year earlier. “I will stay in this gap. I will defend this nation. And I will not allow anyone to put a dagger to the throat of democracy”.

But even by his own admission, Biden’s presidency has been shaped by and was a response to his predecessor.

At 75 years old and in full mourning over the recent death of his first-born son, the former vice president decided to rejoin public life to fight for the “soul of americaAfter watching Trump rave about some of the white supremacists during a violent protest in Charlottesville in 2017.

Biden beat out newer and more popular rivals in a contested 2020 Democratic Party primary on the promise that he was the best able to beat Trump. And he was sworn into office just two weeks after the violent insurrection because he convinced Americans that he could leave four turbulent years behind and build for the future.

In his speech on Thursday, Biden He did not mention the name of the former president. However, he released comments and reprimands aimed directly at Trump and the Republican Party, which is increasingly molded in his image.

Trump, He said Biden, is not just a former president, but a defeated one whose “hurt ego cares more than our democracy”.

He refuted the “big lie“Of Trump – three of them, actually – and his attempts to continue sowing doubts about the development of an election that even the former president’s own secretary of Justice and the judges he elected determined were fair and free of significant misconduct .

He mocked the self-described patriotism of those who attacked the police and stormed the Capitol, as well as the man who inspired them to do so. “You can’t love your country only when you win”Declared Biden.

On the anniversary, Biden carried out his strongest condemnation of his predecessor, after a first year in the position where he tried, often unsuccessfully, to avoid talking about the “previous type ”.

“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump”, He pointed out when he had been in the presidency for four weeks. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore”.

But in the last year, Trump He has grown from a two-time impeachment pariah to a self-proclaimed president-in-exile, and his grip on the Republican Party is now stronger than when he left office.

Trump has waged an aggressive campaign to oust the few Republicans willing to condemn him from his party. And he has amassed financial resources with the goal of re-occupying the White House in 2024.

It’s a paradox for the president: Biden often has his highlights when confronting Trump, but talking about the former president also serves to elevate him in the national conversation.

Good there could be a rematch in 2024. Biden, who has indicated his intention to run for a second term, told ABC last month that he is even more likely to run again if Trump is running for the election. Republican Party.

But at the same time, an attempt is already underway to change the way elections are conducted, and that could herald a very different dynamic in the upcoming elections.

In many states, Republicans are promoting initiatives to influence future elections by installing favorable leaders in local electoral positions, and are backing some of those who participated in the insurrection to run for public office.

Democrats, for their part, are pushing for voting changes that would seek to reverse those GOP initiatives and enshrine other long-awaited Democratic priorities in law.

The violent acts of January 6 were just a small sample of the widespread determination of Trump’s allies to reverse the outcome of the election. More than 50 lawsuits were filed in contested states alleging some form of electoral fraud, a move that failed after judges appointed by different presidents – including Trump himself – rejected the claims.

The Justice Department began a process to investigate cases of widespread voter fraud, until former Attorney General William Barr said there were none.

In addition, allies of Trump They made unsubstantiated allegations about the voting machines used in many states, including the false claim that some were manufactured by a company linked to Venezuela, among other outlandish accusations that are now the subject of libel litigation.

Despite your pushy speech on Thursday, Biden and other government officials rarely expand publicly on conspiracy theories about elections, in part because it encourages them to continue to proliferate.

And it is widely anticipated that, despite Biden’s promise to help push the voting rights bill until it passes, he will not pick up on the events of 2020 much more. He believes Trump supporters are more likely to be beaten by governing, and doing it well, than by constantly re-litigating his presidential victory.

Leaving the Capitol on Thursday, Biden paused to explain why he decided to criticize Trump so strongly after shunning it for so long.

“In order to heal you have to recognize the magnitude of the wound “, he pointed. “You have to face it. That is what great nations do. They face the truth. They stand up to it. And they move on ”.

Yet as much as Biden wants to move on, the future of America’s democracy is now tied to the events of the 2020 election, and the aftermath, which show no sign of abating.