Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney is warning that President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign focus on the January 6 riot is beating a “dead political horse.”
Biden delivered the first speech of his re-election campaign on Friday, taking direct aim at former President Donald Trump. Trump is the favorite to win the GOP nomination for president in 2024, though the first primary contest in Iowa has yet to take place.
During his speech, Biden continually hit on Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 riot and compared Trump’s rhetoric since to that of the Nazis. Romney, a moderate Republican and vocal Trump critic, said that Biden’s focus on the January 6 riot of three years ago is a political loser.
“As a Biden campaign theme, I think the threat to democracy pitch is a bust,” Romney told The New York Times in a text. “Jan. 6 will be four years old by the election. People have processed it, one way or another. Biden needs fresh material, a new attack, rather than kicking a dead political horse.”
Biden characterized Trump as an authoritarian and a threat to the United States.
“Three years ago tomorrow, we saw with our own eyes the violent mob stormed the United States Capitol. It was almost in disbelief as you first turned on the television,” Biden said on Friday. “For the first time in our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer, transfer of power in America. First time.”
“It was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history. An attempt to overturn a free and fair election by force and violence. A record 81 million people voted for my candidacy and to end his presidency,” Biden said of Trump’s handling of the riot. The president said Trump orchestrated the riot in a last-ditch effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election after exhausting “every legal avenue.”
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Despite Biden’s amped-up rhetoric surrounding the riot, politicos and lawmakers are skeptical whether hammering Trump on January 6 will be a political winner. In recent months, Trump’s approval rating has caught up with Biden’s as Americans’ worries grow over issues such as the economy, immigration, and crime.
Trump blasted Biden over his speech last week. Trump said that Biden is threatening America through incompetence in the Oval Office.
“Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of the United States — he is incompetent, he is crooked, and in many respects, he is Benedict Arnold,” Trump said, according to Fox News. “He is destroying our country like no one else has done before.”