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For eighteen months, President Joe Biden has studiously avoided lengthy discussion of former President Donald Trump for fear of dignifying his disgraced predecessor.
But in remarks billed as the White House’s opening salvo in the midterm election campaign on Thursday night, Biden framed nearly the entire address around the Republican standard-bearer, whose continued influence on his party threatens “the very soul of this country.”
“For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it is not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us,” Biden said in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the American experiment and, to Biden, “sacred ground.”