Trump calls Biden the 'destroyer' of democracy despite his own efforts to overturn 2020 election
CTV
Former U.S. 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 Trump tried to overturn is "the destroyer of American democracy."
Former U.S. 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 Trump tried to overturn is "the destroyer of American democracy."
Trump's allegations about Biden, a Democrat, echo the ones that Biden has been making for years against his predecessor. As Trump has dominated the Republican presidential primary and talked about targeting his rivals and the news media if he wins the White House again, Biden has stepped up his own warnings, contending Trump is " determined to destroy American democracy."
On Saturday, Trump made his most explicit argument to date on why voters should instead see his rival as the bigger democratic threat. Trump repeated his longstanding contention that the four criminal indictments against him show Biden is misusing the federal justice system against his rival.
"He's been weaponizing government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant," Trump said to a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy," Trump continued, arguing: "Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy."
Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesman, responded: "Donald Trump's America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies. You don't have to take our word for it -- Trump has admitted it himself."
Trump has long promised to prosecute Biden in retaliation should he return to the White House. On Saturday, though, the former president extended his arguments about Biden's threat to democracy to lawsuits filed by two liberal organizations seeking to rule him ineligible for office under a rarely used Civil War-era constitutional provision that prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection" from returning to office.
All of the suits to date have failed. Biden has no involvement in them, but Democratic donors who back him also help fund the liberal groups filing the claims. That's led Trump to blame them on the president, whom he contended had "defaced the Constitution" in trying to block him.
