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President Biden will deliver a prime-time speech on Thursday about the fight for democracy in America and “the ongoing battle for the nation’s soul,” a White House official said Monday, an address that likely confirms his growing rhetorical emphasis on the anti-democratic forces he sees as capturing much of the Republican Party.
Speaking at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, the president is expected to highlight his administration’s accomplishments 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 are still under attack,” the official said. “It will make it clear who is fighting for these rights, fighting for these freedoms and fighting for our democracy.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the content of the speech.
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Biden has in recent days adopted a message for the midterm elections that includes searing denunciations of what he calls the authoritarian strains of the Republican Party, most notably during a speech last Thursday that many in the GOP had turned toward “semi-fascism.” . He added that “MAGA Republicans,” as he called them, “embrace political violence. They don’t believe in America.”
While Biden has touched on these issues before, the fraught nature of the speech was a shift from a message that had more often emphasized 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 more forceful allegations.
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 has cited it 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 sometimes suggested that a central way to combat anti-democratic forces is to demonstrate that democracy and government can work. That prompted some Democrats to complain that he shied away from strongly denouncing Trump and other Republicans who falsely claimed the last election was rigged and may be laying the groundwork to challenge future legitimate elections.
But now it seems Biden is looking to combine the two messages, saying that “MAGA Republicans” are trying to destroy democracy and traditional Democrats and Republicans are getting things done.
Biden has delivered few speeches during his presidency, often preferring to make less formal remarks at less prominent moments. Delivering 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 backdrops when aiming to make a broader statement.
During the campaign, for example, Biden spoke at Gettysburg, using the historic Civil War battlefield to lament “the cost of division” and saying, “We must come together as a nation.” He also spoke at Warm Springs, Ga., whose therapeutic waters were a frequent destination for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And last year, Biden visited Tulsa to commemorate the racial 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 galvanize supporters around a particular cause, whether from of the Senate or, in this case, of one of the nations. most sacred grounds dedicated to democracy.
Philadelphia has been a favorite place 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, emphasizing the importance of being located in the cradle of American democracy. His campaign was based there and he returned to Philadelphia shortly before the election.
Biden visited the city again last year to deliver remarks about the importance of protecting voting rights.
Matt Viser contributed to this report.