(LifeSiteNews) – Democrat President Joe Biden claims that preventing his predecessor and Republican opponent Donald Trump from returning to the White House is a threat to the nation regardless of Biden’s own political future and that mostly unidentified foreign leaders agree.
Speaking to reporters at a Connecticut fundraiser, Biden bemoaned that “for the first time in American history, a former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,” a reference to Trump’s conviction last week for supposedly falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Many legal experts have cast doubt on the factual basis and legal rationale for that conviction, as well as the political bias of the trial that reached it.
“But as disturbing as that is, more damaging is the all-out assault Donald Trump is making on the American system of justice,” Biden went on, a reference to Trump’s vocal comments denouncing the trial as a partisan witch hunt against him. Trump “does not deserve to be president whether or not I’m running,” he added.
On Tuesday, Time Magazine published a sit-down interview with Biden conducted May 28, during which Biden claimed, “There’s not a major international meeting I attend that before it’s over — and I’ve attended many, more than most presidents have in 3 1/2 years — that a world leader doesn’t pull me aside as I’m leaving and say, ‘He can’t win. You can’t let him win.’”
“My democracy and their democracy is at stake,” Biden added. “My democracy is at stake. And so name me a world leader other than (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor) Orban and (Russian dictator Vladimir) Putin who think that Trump should be the world leader in the United States of America.”
Rhetoric painting Trump as a unique danger to constitutional democracy has been a constant refrain since his rise in Republican politics, even though as president he largely pursued conventional Republican policies, and his vigorous challenging of the 2020 election outcome never came close to impeding a peaceful transfer of power on January 20, 2021. Framing GOP presidential nominees as “dangerous extremists” has long been a hallmark of Democrat rhetoric, from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Mitt Romney to Donald Trump.
The intensification of Biden’s anti-Trump rhetoric may also be explained by the fact that the New York conviction so far has not changed the state of the race. While various opponents of Trump have seized on individual polls purporting to show voters less likely to support him in light of the outcome, national polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH continue to show Trump with a razor-thin popular-vote lead, with his performance in individual states still translating to a comfortable Electoral College victory.
Serious concerns over Biden’s age and mental health, and deep dissatisfaction with his job performance, give the current president electoral challenges more than comparable to the negative perception of Trump’s ongoing trials, with many predicting that independent voters will prioritize changing their life circumstances under Biden over whatever they may personally think of Trump.