PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden will deliver a speech in Philadelphia on Thursday as part of a newly aggressive swing hammering “MAGA Republicans” as he argues that democracy is at stake, again, in the upcoming midterm elections.
The 8 p.m. EDT speech in front of Independence Hall comes as Biden has increasingly attacked Republicans allied with former President Donald Trump, saying they pose a threat to democracy, American values, and the rule of law. He’s aiming to cast November’s elections not just a referendum on his tenure, but a choice between Democrats and GOP candidates who still embrace Trump.
”Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th,” he said in a speech Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre, referring to Trump supporters and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Last week in Maryland he accused the GOP of embracing “semi-fascism” and that Trump and “MAGA Republicans” have chosen “anger, violence, hate and division.”
He has said the speech Thursday will focus on the fight for “the soul of the nation,” the same language Biden used when running to unseat Trump in 2020.
In his second visit to Pennsylvania in three days, Biden will stand at a landmark of U.S. democracy as many GOP candidates for governor, Senate and key election offices across the country — including in Pennsylvania — have assailed the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election, and after Trump allies attacked the FBI for its search of the former president’s Florida home.
Along with the symbolic value of Independence Hall, Biden will be in a key swing state hosting some of the country’s most high-profile races. The governor’s race, in particular, will decide who has oversight over the state’s election system in the 2024 presidential race, when Pennsylvania will again be a critical battleground. And he’ll be speaking in a key political area for Democrats: along with deep blue Philadelphia, the city’s suburbs largely recoiled from the Trump presidency, helping swing the state back to Democrats in 2020.
In putting the focus on Trump, Biden is aiming to put the spotlight on a former president who energized Democrats, and drove many swing voters away from the GOP. Republicans, in turn, have blasted Biden’s rhetoric as divisive and contrary to the unity he promised in his presidential campaign.
