Trump's recent authoritarian statements are evidently starting to hurt him, because he now wants to turn the tables and accuse President Biden of doing that - while posing as the savior of democracy. It won't work. His statements are clearly the statements of a wannabe dictator, and in this age of television and tape, they can't be taken back. Here is part of how The Washington Post covered his recent attempt though:
Republican polling leader Donald Trumpmoved to deflect from criminal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and from his own pledges to take revenge on his opponents if he returns to the White House, seeking to parry warnings that he presents a danger to democracy.
His speech on Saturdaywas an effort to turn the tables on rising alarms from Democrats and some Republicans that Trump’s return to power would imperil free elections and civil liberties. As candidates ramp up appearances in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Jan. 15, the former president, who refused to accept his 2020 election loss and inspired his supporters to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, responded by comparing President Biden to a fascist tyrant, and the campaign distributed signs reading ‘BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY.’
“Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump told a raucous crowd of a couple thousand supporters here. “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … This campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and the criminals and the Biden administration.”
The speech showed that Biden’s framing of the 2024 election as democracy versus authoritarianism is resonating with voters, according to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. . . .
“Trump’s Iowa speech continues his use of fascist rhetoric: it’s us versus them, he tells his supporters, and ‘they’ are enemies who cheat,” she said. “Authoritarians have a lot of rhetorical tricks for explaining away anti-democratic actions as actually ‘democratic.’”
The Biden campaign called the speech an attempt to distract from Trump’s own promises to punish his political opponents, and a renewed push in recent weeks to repeal the 2010 health care law commonly known as Obamacare.
Throughout Trump’s political career, he has often responded to attacks by accusing his opponents of the same.
