Biden launches poll campaign with 'Save Democracy' plea; Trump hits back

Washington, Jan 7: US President Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign with the "Save Democracy Plea" directly attacking his predecessor Donald Trump for the January 6, 2021, riots on Capitol Hill, while commemorating the 3rd anniversary as a "Day of Infamy".

President Biden made an impassioned appeal to Americans at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania to join him in defending US democracy from the former President, who by comparison has promised to pardon the insurrectionists.

The democracy those Americans (freedom fighters) fought for is under threat. "Whether democracy is still America's sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time," he said in a Friday speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the Continental Army spent the frigid 1777-78 winter under General George Washington during the uprising against British Colonial rule while freeing America in 1776 on July 4 from the shackles of imperialism.

Biden listed a litany of Trump's "more outrageous" claims and comments, drawing analogies to the language of Adolf Hitler and the antidemocratic actions of dictators.

Highly critical of Trump laughing at the violent attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul, who suffered blunt edge head trauma, Biden said of Trump, "What a sick--" and stopped short of adding another, perhaps more colourful word. "We all know who Donald Trump is," Biden said later. "The question we have to answer is, who are we?" Media Reports quoted Biden as asking.

How central is this message to Biden's re-election campaign, the President declared that the "preservation of American democracy" is the "central issue of my presidency" in a slick campaign video released this week, CNN reported.

Trump responded to Biden's speech Friday by calling it "pathetic fear-mongering" and mocking Biden's lifelong struggle with stuttering. Trump argued that Biden's presidency was marked by "weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure," he told a crowd of supporters in Sioux Center, Iowa. "That's why crooked Joe is staging his pathetic fear-mongering campaign event in Pennsylvania today."

"He's a threat to democracy. I'm a threat? They've weaponized the government -- he's saying I'm a threat to democracy," Trump said.