Former President Donald Trump blasted his political rival President Joe Biden during a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday, saying the president represents “a great threat to our democracy.”
Trump spoke at the swing state campaign event where he was flanked by Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, whom Trump has endorsed in Ohio’s GOP primary. Throughout his speech, Trump repeatedly hit Biden, focusing on the ongoing border crisis that has hit record levels under the president’s watch. The leading candidate in the 2024 presidential race also accused Biden of using the Department of Justice to go after his main opponent.
“Remember this, Joe Biden is a great threat to our democracy,” Trump said, according to Fox News. “He’s a tremendous threat to our democracy. His incompetence is the number one reason. Also, he uses the Justice Department, the FBI, to go after his political opponent, which happens to be me.”
“There’s never been a president so bad,” the former president added. “There’s never been anything like it. He’s incompetent, he’s crooked.”
The former president currently faces four criminal trials, including two related to his challenging his 2020 election loss to Biden and one for his handling of classified documents after leaving office. Meanwhile, Biden was recently cleared by a special counsel report that looked into his handling of classified documents as vice president, which said that “Biden would likely present himself to a jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden also faces a congressional investigation into his and his family’s foreign business dealings.
In his Saturday speech, Trump also discussed the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley allegedly by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who authorities believe is an “active member” of a gang.
“Laken Riley would be alive today if Biden had not unleashed his savage attack on America. And that’s what he’s done. But instead of apologizing to Laken’s family, Joe Biden apologized to the killer for calling him illegal. He shouldn’t have done that,” Trump said.
“We believe that Laken’s killer is an illegal alien criminal. He is an illegal monster. He should never have been in our country,” he added.
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Trump’s labeling of Biden as a “threat to democracy” comes after Biden has used the same descriptor for Trump and his supporters numerous times. In December, Trump said Biden’s use of “threat to Democracy” to describe him and his movement is a “hoax” pushed by the Left and the “fake news.”
“This is their new line. Here we go again — ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ ‘Mueller, Mueller, Mueller,’ ‘Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.’ One hoax after another,” Trump said, adding that Biden is the “real threat to democracy for two simple reasons: he’s corrupt and incompetent — grossly incompetent.”
A month later, Biden doubled down on his attacks on Trump as a threat to democracy during a speech looking back on the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump responded to Biden’s speech, calling it a “pathetic fearmongering campaign event.”