Comment President Biden will deliver a prime-time speech Thursday on the fight for democracy in America and “the ongoing battle for the nation’s soul,” a White House official said Monday, a speech likely to confirm the growing rhetoric his emphasis on the anti-democratic forces he sees occupying much of the Republican Party. Speaking at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, the president is expected to highlight his administration’s achievements and argue that the country’s democratic values will be at stake during the midterm elections. “He will talk about the progress we have made as a nation to protect our democracy, but how our rights and freedoms continue to be under attack,” the official said. “It will make clear who is fighting for these rights, for these freedoms and for our democracy.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the content of the speech. Democrats see the once unthinkable: A narrow path to retaining the House Biden in recent days has adopted a midterm election message that includes fiery denunciations of what he calls authoritarians in the Republican Party, notably during a speech last Thursday that many in the GOP had turned toward “semi-fascism.” He added that the “MAGA Republicans,” as he called them, “embrace political violence. They don’t believe in America.” While Biden has touched on such issues in the past, the full nature of the speech was a shift from a message that has more often highlighted his legislative accomplishments. Thursday’s speech is not being billed as a political event, and given its nature as a prime-time presidential address, Biden can avoid some of his sharpest accusations. The need to restore America’s core values, including democracy and the rule of law, has been a theme of the Biden presidency from the beginning. He cited that as the reason he decided to run in 2020, describing his horror at the white supremacist march in Charlottesville in 2017 and President Donald Trump’s comment afterward that there were “very good people on both sides.” Biden has at times suggested a central way to combat anti-democratic forces is to show that democracy and governance can work. That prompted some Democrats to complain that he avoided strongly denouncing Trump and other Republicans who falsely claimed the last election was rigged and who may lay the groundwork to challenge future legitimate elections. But now Biden seems to be seeking to conflate the two messages — saying that “MAGA Republicans” are trying to destroy democracy and Democrats and traditional Republicans are getting things done. Biden has made few speeches during his presidency, often preferring to make less formal remarks at less obvious moments. During Thursday’s speech at Independence Park, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and signed, Biden continued his pattern of using symbolic settings when trying to make a broader statement. During the campaign, for example, Biden spoke at Gettysburg, using the historic Civil War battlefield to decry “the cost of division” and saying, “We must come together as a nation.” He also spoke at Warm Springs, Ga., whose healing waters were a frequent destination for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And last year, Biden visited Tulsa to commemorate the racist attacks that killed up to 300 Black Americans a century earlier. Biden, throughout his career, has also used speeches as a way to mark important moments, seeing them as a way to organize his own thoughts and mobilize supporters around a particular cause either from the Senate floor or, in this case, one of the most sacred spaces dedicated to democracy. Philadelphia has been a favorite location for Biden, not far from his childhood home in Scranton or his current home in Delaware. He announced his 2020 presidential bid in the city, noting the importance of staying in the birthplace of American democracy. His campaign was based there and he returned to Philadelphia just before the election. Biden visited the city again last year to make remarks about the importance of protecting voting rights. Matt Viser contributed to this report.
