President Joe Biden is predicting that the 2024 presidential election could make or break the MAGA movement.
“I think that this is the last gasp or maybe the first big gasp of the MAGA Republicans. And I think Trump has concluded that he has to win. And they’ll pull out all the stops,” Biden said during an interview with ProPublica that aired Sunday. Though the 2024 general election is still more than a year away, and former President Donald Trump has yet to win the Republican nomination, Biden has already moved to go after the current front-runner in the GOP primary.
Biden has been pitching his reelection bid as a fight for democracy. So far he’s delivered four major speeches on the topic at events across the country, the most recent — and most forceful — in Arizona last week.
“We have to stand up for America’s values embodied in our Declaration of Independence because we know MAGA extremists have already proven they won’t,” Biden told those who gathered in Tempe to hear him speak. “We have to stand up for our Constitution and the institutions of democracy because MAGA extremists have made clear they won’t.”
During recent closed-door fundraisers, the president has also warned that “democracy is on the ballot,” and he’s publicly railed against political violence like that which the country saw during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In the interview with ProPublica, Biden also slammed hard-right House Republicans’ move to refuse to vote for a bill that would avert a government shutdown unless their demands for spending cuts and conservative border legislation were not met.
“You see what's happening in terms of what MAGA Republicans are doing in the House. They don't make up a majority of the House, but they're bringing them [to] a screeching halt,” Biden told former CNN reporter John Harwood in the interview.
