You probably didn’t watch Joe Biden fumble, stumble, and mumble his way through that pathetic speech he made in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on Friday. It was supposed to set the tone for his 2024 reelection campaign — or, at least, what will consist of that campaign until Biden is dumped out of his spot on the Democrats’ ticket (nobody seems to have a great idea who the replacement will be, but it seems more and more inevitable that Biden simply isn’t going to be able to carry on the charade that he’s the guy in charge too much longer).
READ MORE: The Democrats Can’t Disgorge Biden
We thought we’d use this column as a means of keeping you informed as to what Biden said without making you watch him.
And to do that, we’re going to use the transcript of the speech, because obviously the people who commissioned it to be written for him are the ones actually in charge of the country. Biden certainly didn’t write it. He barely spoke the words, after all.
Just like the speech he gave last year at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, bathed in a satanic red light as he screamed about the conservative Other, this was a speech that betrayed just how misanthropic, bleak, and hateful Team Biden is.
Which is exactly the same attitude toward the American public Team Obama had, something my new book Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It’s All Obama very adeptly describes and explains as it relates to the effect on our nation both teams, which are actually one team, have had. (RELATED from Scott McKay: Barack’s Lieutenant: The Racism, Revenge, and Ruin of Claudine Gay)
But you might struggle to believe that characterization. So we’ll show you the transcript of the speech, which will prove it:
Today — the topic of my speech today is deadly serious, and I think it needs to be made at the outset of this campaign.
In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks: to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire that existed in the world at the time….
America made a vow. Never again would we bow down to a king.
The months ahead would be incredibly difficult. But General Washington knew … something about the soul of the nation [that] was struggling to be born….
This ragtag army [was] made up of ordinary people. Their mission, George Washington declared, was nothing less than “a sacred cause.” That was the phrase used: “a sacred cause.”
Freedom, liberty, democracy. American democracy.
It’s amazing that Biden would attempt to cloak himself in Washington and the Continental Army given the ill treatment his administration has given the nation’s founding generation. On a related note, did you hear that the Biden administration had been planning to take down a statue of William Penn in a national park?
William Penn! What did William Penn do wrong? Take land away from the Indians? There wouldn’t be a Pennsylvania for Biden to give these atrocious speeches in but for Penn’s exploits. He was a Quaker, for crying out loud, and that’s not good enough for Biden’s left-wing loons?
Today, we gather in a new year, some 246 years later, just one day before January 6th, a day forever shared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America — lost it all.
Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America’s sacred cause? I mean it. (Applause.)
This is not rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about.
The choice is clear. Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America, not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.
Now it’s time to cut to the chase. Biden can run his mouth about sacred causes and democracy, and, for right now, we’ll leave alone the irony of his warbling about democracy while his people do everything they can to deny Americans the right to vote for the Republican frontrunner. What’s more important than that is Joe Biden bringing up Trump’s moral failings in the way he does in this speech for the same reason Democrats are screeching in unison that Trump is Hitler reincarnate.
This is about ginning up hardcore leftists across America to stop Trump from getting reelected by whatever means they can, escalating all the way up to violence.
Just keep that in mind. You can’t unsee it.
Our campaign is different. For me and Kamala, our campaign is about America. It’s about you. It’s about every age and background that occupy this country. It’s about the future we’re going to continue to build together. And our campaign is about preserving and strengthening our American democracy.
“Our Democracy.” We’ve talked about that before. “Our Democracy” is the Obama democracy, in which DEI replaces meritocracy, identity politics replaces reason, cancel culture replaces the free exchange of ideas, ballot-harvesting replaces voter persuasion, and chaos replaces rule of law. That’s what they’re selling, and if you’re not buying, you’re a white supremacist … regardless of your race.
Three years ago tomorrow, we saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol. It was almost in disbelief as you first turned on the television.
For the first time on our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power in America — first time — smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police.
Outside, gallows were erected as the MAGA crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”
Inside, they hunted for Speaker Pelosi [of] the House,
waschanting, as they marched through and smashed windows, “Where’s Nancy?”
Leftist protesters showed up in droves on Trump’s inauguration day in 2017 and rioted throughout the Capitol, and that was after a concerted, organized campaign to intimidate Trump electors into “going faithless.” And just over 48 hours after Biden spun this latest diatribe about the Jan. 6 protests, pro-Hamas lunatics shut down three bridges and a tunnel going into Manhattan. What did he have to say about those mobs?
Over 140 police officers were injured. Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day.
And because of Donald Trump’s lies, they died because these lies brought a mob to Washington.
He promised it would be “wild,” and it was. He told the crowd to “fight like hell,” and all hell was unleashed.
He promised he would right them. Everything they did, he would be side by side with them. Then, as usual, he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House.
As America was attacked from within, Donald Trump watched on TV in the private small dining room off my Oval — off the Oval Office.
The entire nation watched in horror. The whole world watched in disbelief. And Trump did nothing.
Members of his staff, members of his family, Republican leaders who were under attack for the — at that very moment pled with him: “Act. Call off the mob.”
Imagine had he gone out and said, “Stop.”
And still, Trump did nothing. It was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history: an attempt to overturn a free and fair election by force and violence.
Trump’s lies? What funerals did Biden attend for cops who died at the hands of Jan. 6 protesters? Which ones were those? (RELATED: The Un-American Inequality of Jan. 6 ‘Justice’)
Trump did call off the Jan. 6 protesters. The question is who really egged them on. A suggestion: Watch Tucker Carlson’s interview with U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins about the more than 200 federal agents who salted the crowd that entered the Capitol, because there is much more to this story than you’ve been led to believe — especially by people like Biden.
A record 81 million people voted for my candidacy and to end his presidency. Trump lost the popular vote by 7 million.
OK, Joe. If you say so. How many of those 81 million were citizens here illegally? Oh — and how many would have voted differently had they been informed about what was on your son’s laptop computer?
Trump’s claims about the 2020 election never could stand up in court. Trump lost 60 court cases — 60. Trump lost the Republican-controlled states. Trump lost before a Trump-appointed judge — and then judges. And Trump lost before the United States Supreme Court. (Applause.) All of it, he lost.
It was a very successfully botched election. That’s true. But the statement above is false. In at least one case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court found that state’s 2020 presidential election illegally executed. The Wisconsin Court left it to the state Legislature to decide what to do about it, and the Legislature opted to punt. But the idea that Trump had no legal victories is not correct.
Trump lost recount after recount after recount in state after state. But in desperation and weakness, Trump and his MAGA followers went after election officials who ensured your power as a citizen would be heard. These public servants had their lives forever upended by attacks and death threats for simply doing their jobs….
Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was just hit with $148 million judgment for cruelty and defamation that he inflicted against them. Other state and local elected officials across the country faced similar personal attacks. In addition, Fox News agreed to pay a record $8 — $787 million for the lies they told about voter fraud.
Wow. The financial ruin of Rudy Giuliani by a partisan Democrat Atlanta jury is something to celebrate. Wow.
Let’s be clear about the 2020 election. Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election — every one. But the legal path just took Trump back to the truth that I had won the election and he was a loser. (Applause.)
Well, knowing how his mind works now, he had one act left — one desperate act available to him: the violence of January the 6th.
We at least know that Trump’s mind works, period. That’s a debatable topic where Biden is concerned.
And since that day, more than 1,200 people have been charged for their assault on the Capitol. Nearly 900 of them have been convicted or pled guilty. Collectively, to date, they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison. (Applause.)
It’s an applause line when Biden brags about all the political prisoners, the vast majority of whom committed no violence whatever on Jan. 6, who his administration has thrown into the D.C. prison gulag.
And what has Trump done? Instead of calling them “criminals,” he’s called these insurrectionists “patriots.” They’re “patriots.” And he promised to pardon them if he returns to office.
Trump said that there was “a lot of love” on January the 6th. The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence. One Capitol police officer called it a “medieval battle.” That same officer was called vile, racist names…. He said he was more afraid inside the halls of Congress than fighting in the war in Iraq.
In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6th, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election. But he — we knew the truth because we saw it with our own eyes….
Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the Constitution; they were there to destroy the Constitution.
Interestingly enough, what the Jan. 6 riot disrupted was the scheduled presentation — by current House Speaker Mike Johnson and others — of evidence before Congress that elections in the six contested states were conducted in violation of state election laws. The protests, which, according to Higgins in the Tucker Carlson interview, were escalated by federal informants and agents outfitted in pro-Trump garb who served as tour guides for protesters, had the effect of ensuring that presentation was never made.
So maybe Biden is right that these guys weren’t patriots. And maybe Biden is admitting a lot more than he intends to.
Trump won’t do what an American president must do. He refuses to denounce political violence.
So, hear me clearly. I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t. Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system — never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None. (Applause.)
What happened to Ashli Babbitt was political violence. What happened to Roger Stone and Mark Houck was political violence. Biden has weaponized the federal law-enforcement agencies against political dissenters and, in so doing, has committed political violence, or certainly its adjacent, on a level we haven’t seen since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.
There is no reason to believe his denial, especially given what’s coming in this speech.
You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.
You know, Trump and his MAGA supporters not only embrace political violence, but they laugh about it. At his rally, he jokes about an intruder, whipped up by the Big Trump Lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull and echoing the very same words used on January 6th: “Where’s Nancy?” …
Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future. He’s being straightforward. He’s not hiding the ball.
His first rally for the 2024 campaign opened with a choir of January 6th insurrectionists singing from prison on a cell phone while images of the January 6th riot played on a big screen behind him at his rally.
Can you believe that? This is like something out of a fairy tale — a bad fairy tale.
The majority of Americans think Joe Biden is despicable. They might not have a sunny opinion of Trump, either, but, then again, how does Joe Biden improve the level of political discourse by hurling such insults at his opponent, against whom he has weaponized the U.S. Justice Department?
Trump’s not concerned about your future, I promise you. Trump is now promising a full-scale campaign of “revenge” and “retribution” — his words — for some years to come. They were his words, not mine. He went on to say he would be a dictator on day one….
He called it, and I quote, the “termination of all the rules, regulation, and articles, even those found in the U.S. Constitution.” …
He’s threatened the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the death penalty. Says he should be put to death because the Chairman put his oath to the Constitution ahead of his personal loyalty to Trump.
This coming from a president who called, when he visited a cemetery, called dead soldiers “suckers” and “losers.” …
With former aides, Trump plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy — which he’s not allowed to do in ordinary circumstances — allow him to deploy U.S. military forces on the streets of America. He said it.
He calls those who oppose him “vermin.” He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.
He proudly posts on social media the words that best describe his 2024 campaign, quote, “revenge”; quote, “power”; and, quote, “dictatorship.”
There’s no confusion about who Trump is and what he intends to do.
The “dictator on day one” spin, and the other pejorative lies and out-of-context calumnies told in this passage, are not simply political rhetoric. They’re more than that. This is about whipping up so much hostility among partisan Democrats that one of them takes Trump out. That’s patently obvious.
I placed my hand on our family Bible, and I swore an oath on the very same steps of the Capitol just 14 days after the attack on January the 6th.
As I looked out over the capital city, whose streets were lined with National Guard to prevent another attack, I saw an American that had been pushed to the brink….
[But] I felt enormous pride in America because American democracy had been tested and American democracy had held together. And when Trump had seen weakness in our democracy and continues to talk about it, I saw strength — your strength…. Your integrity. American strength and integrity.
Ordinary citizens, state election officials, the American judicial system had put the Constitution first and sometimes at their peril.
Because of them, because of you, the will of the people prevailed, not the anger of the mob or the appetites of one man.
Again — he’s using the Justice Department to commence political prosecutions of Trump, not to mention state Democrat officials and state courts, in an effort to deny him ballot access, all while blathering about “democracy.”
Sorry — “Our Democracy.”
When the attack on January 6th happened, there was no doubt about the truth. At the time, even Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators publicly and privately condemned the attack.
As one Republican senator said, “Trump’s behavior was embarrassing and humiliating for the country.” But now, that same senator and those same people have changed their tune.
As time has gone on, politics, fear, money, all have intervened. And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy.
They made their choice. Now the rest of us — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we have to make our choice.
They changed their tune because Team Biden ringed Capitol Hill in razor wire, and people who were guilty of nothing more than trespassing were railroaded into prison in a tyrannical show of power, while it began trickling out that there were agents provocateur in that crowd.
Lies don’t hold up to scrutiny all that well, Joe. That’s why many of those Republicans have changed their tune.
I know mine. And I believe I know America’s.
We will defend the truth, not give in to the Big Lie. We’ll embrace the Constitution and the Declaration, not abandon it. We’ll honor the sacred cause of democracy, not walk away from it.
Today, I make this sacred pledge to you. The defense, protection, and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency. (Applause.)
One wonders whether the sometimes-substitution of “American democracy” for “Our Democracy” is a focus group–tested pivot now that some commentators on the conservative side have begun to notice the “Our Democracy” code language.
America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear: Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot. (Applause.)
“Democracy is on the ballot” is the new Anita Dunn slogan of Team Biden’s. It’s really something — “Democracy is on the ballot,” while the side supposedly of “Democracy” is using typical Third World Obama tactics to deny the public its full ballot choices.
Without democracy, no progress is possible. Think about it. The alternative to democracy is dictatorship — the rule of one, not the rule of “We the People.”
No, that’s false. Our founders saw a constitutional republic as a preferable alternative to both democracy and dictatorship, so that’s what they gave us.
If we can keep it, of course, and it’s quite clear Joe Biden and his organ grinder Barack Obama have no intention of keeping it.
Look at the authoritarian leaders and dictators Trump says he admires — he, out loud, says he admires. I won’t go through them all. It would take too long.
Look, remember when he refers to what he calls the “love letter” exchanges between he and the dictator of North Korea? Those women and men out there in the audience who ever fought for the American military, would you ever believe you’d hear a president say something like that?
His admiration for Putin — I can go on.
Biden is simping for the Iranians and he’s bought off by the Chinese, and he wants to talk about Trump’s friendly relations with dictators? Jeez.
And look at what these autocrats are doing to limit freedom in their countries. They’re limiting freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to assemble, women’s rights, LGB[T]Q rights, people are going to jail, so much more.
It’s true: The push and pull of American history is not a fairy tale. Every stride forward in America is met with a ferocious backlash, many times from those who fear progress and those who exploit that fear for their own personal gain; from those who traffic in lies told for power and profit; from those who are driven by grievance and grift, consumed by conspiracy and victimhood; from those who seek to bury history and ban books.
Did you ever think you’d be at a political event talking about book banning in a presidential election?
For the vast majority of the people who showed up, the Jan. 6 protests were an exercise of freedom of assembly, and we now understand that the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., is attempting to prosecute people for being around the Capitol on that date. Those people who were at the Capitol but didn’t go in and didn’t fight with police, etc., are clearly protesters under the coverage of the First Amendment, and Biden’s people are trying to put them in jail.
We know, thanks to the Missouri v. Biden case, that his allies in the Deep State have suppressed the freedoms of speech and press.
And he elevates the “rights” of the Alphabet People to those protected by the First Amendment. Calls it “progress,” and attacks people who oppose transgender ideology, gay porn in libraries, and critical race theory as “book-banners.” Do you seriously deny that this is Obama’s puppet president?
The choice and contest between those forces — those competing forces, between solidarity and division — is perennial. But this time, it’s so different.
You can’t have a contest — you can’t have a contest if you see politics as an all-out war instead of a peaceful way to resolve our differences.
The level of projection here is astonishing, isn’t it?
All-out war is what Trump wants.
That’s why he doesn’t understand the most fundamental truth about this country…. We’re the only nation in the history of the world … built on an idea: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.” …
We’ve never fully lived up to that. We have a long way to go. But we’ve never walked away from the idea…. But I promise you, I will not let Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans — (applause) — force us to walk away now.
We’re living in an era where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda. The American people know it, and they’re standing bravely in the breach.
Again, you can almost hear the crazies cocking their rifles. But Biden abhors the political violence he’s merrily stoking.
Remember, after 2020, January 6th insurrection to undo the election in which more Americans had voted than any other in American history? America saw the threat posed to the country, and they voted him out. In 2022, historic midterm election, in state after state, election after election, the election deniers were defeated.
The 2022 election was a major disappointment, but Biden really isn’t in much of a position to claim it as a victory seeing that he lost the House.
Now, in 2024, Trump in running as the “denier-in-chief” — the election denier-in-chief. Once again, he’s saying he won’t honor the results of the election if he loses.
Trump says he doesn’t understand. Well, he still doesn’t understand the basic truth, and that is you can’t love your country only when you win. (Applause.) You can’t love your country only when you win.
Wow. Can you hear Michelle Obama saying she was proud of America for the first time after her husband won the Democrat nomination?
Democrats don’t love their country even when they win. Biden has a lot of chutzpah babbling about love of the country he sold out to China and Ukraine.
So, I’ll keep my commitment to be president for all of America, whether you voted for me or not. I’ve done it for the last three years, and I’ll continue to do it.
Together, we can keep proving that America is still a country that believes in decency, dignity, honesty, honor, truth. We still believe that no one, not even the President, is above the law. We still believe — (applause) — the vast majority of us still believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at making it. We’re still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.
Please.
I tell you from my experience working with leaders around the world — and I mean this sincerely, not a joke — that America is still viewed as the beacon of democracy for the world.
I can’t tell you how many — how many world leaders — and I know all of them, virtually all of them — grab my arm in private and say, “He can’t win. Tell me. No, my country will be at risk.”
He can’t tell us because it’s a lie. Why won’t he name those world leaders? Then we can evaluate why they purportedly would want Biden in office.
The speech devolves into some barely intelligible drivel about George Washington and kings and how Trump wants to be a king; you’re likely out of patience with this by now, and I know I certainly am.
And, of course, you’ve seen this bizarre ending:
BIDEN (screaming): "I UNDERSTAND POWER!"pic.twitter.com/6dR9QciETA
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) January 5, 2024
What to take from this is that while Biden is an angry, unhinged, clearly senile shell of a politician at this point, the problem is not so much that he’s the occupant of the White House but that the people in control, who commission his speeches and craft his message, are very much like the people who inflicted that Obama-produced Leave the World Behind movie on the public — misanthropic, hostile, bleak, and disdainful of traditional America.
He profanes Valley Forge by going there and touting “Our Democracy” while walking none of the walk. And the speech stings the nostrils, even given the low expectations we’ve already set for Biden.
It was a very trashy speech from a trashy president. You expected little else, and you weren’t disappointed.
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