Biden sounds alarm, issues dire warnings about Trump and criticizes GOP silence

President Joe Biden issued one of his most dire warnings yet that Donald Trump and his allies are a menace to American democracy, declaring Thursday that the former president is more interested in personal power than upholding the nation’s core values and suggesting even mainstream Republicans are complicit. “The silence is deafening,” he said.
During a speech in Arizona celebrating a library to be built honoring his friend and fierce Trump critic, the late Republican Sen. John McCain, Biden repeated one of his key campaign themes, branding the “Make America Great Again” movement as an existential threat to the nation’s political system.
He’s reviving that idea ahead of next year’s presidential race after it buoyed Democrats during last fall’s midterm election, laying out the threat in especially stark terms: “There’s something dangerous happening in America right now.”
“We should all remember, democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle,” Biden said. “They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn threats to democracy, when people are willing to give away that which is most precious to them because they feel frustrated, disillusioned, tired, alienated.”
The 2024 election is still more than a year away, yet Biden’s focus reflects Trump’s status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party’s nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory. The president’s speech was his fourth in a series of addresses on what he sees as threats to democracy, a topic that is a touchstone for him as he tries to remain in office in the face of low approval ratings and widespread concern from voters about his age, 80.
Biden is trying to shift the political narrative to a line of attack he used frequently ahead of last year’s midterms, when Democrats gained a Senate seat and only narrowly lost the House to the GOP. That could be especially tricky given that Biden is facing mounting pressure on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans are holding the first hearing in their impeachment inquiry and where the prospect of a government shutdown is looming — with Trump actively egging one on.
On the first anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters staged an insurrection, Biden visited the Capitol and accused Trump of continuing to hold a “dagger” at democracy’s throat.