Trump’s ‘dictator’ remark puts 2024 campaign right where Biden wants it

Source: Politico | December 7, 2023 | Jonathan Lemire and Myah Ward

The president’s team used the remarks by the GOP frontrunner to showcase why Biden views Trump as a threat to democracy.

Donald Trump keeps returning the 2024 presidential race to the ground where Joe Biden wants to fight it.

After Trump told a Fox News town hall he would not be a dictator upon returning to office “other than Day One,” the Biden campaign pounced. It highlighted Trump’s remarks as another moment in which the GOP frontrunner showcased his undemocratic and dangerous plans for a possible second term.

Biden has expressed his fear to confidants that Trump would have unchecked power if he were to return to office, according to three people granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. Trump would likely have at least one Republican-controlled chamber in Congress, a conservative Supreme Court, the allegiance of true-believer staff members and GOP state officials — and the knowledge he could be impeached twice and charged criminally in four jurisdictions and still claim power. He’d view that as a mandate, Biden has said privately, and abuse power at home and change how America is viewed abroad.

All three people said the stakes have escalated in the president’s mind as he’s watched the Republican Party remain in Trump’s thrall despite Jan. 6 and the revelations about what his predecessor has in store for the future.

“It’s coming back full circle — that in the president’s mind, this is the moral authority for the race. This is an existential threat. This is the reason he ran initially, and the reason — with Donald Trump running — he’s running again,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster for Biden’s campaign in 2020.

“The president has always believed that it was his duty to get the nation beyond Trump,” said one of the three people close to him, who spoke with Biden about his views on Trump and was granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. “He had hoped 2020 would have done it but it didn’t. So he has to do it again.”

Some Democrats have urged the reelection team to highlight other issues. This past weekend, a group of the party’s governors used its annual retreat to urge Biden to focus on issues like abortion, not Trump.

But while the Biden camp will continue to draw issue-specific contrasts, the president himself has made clear he wants to frame the election ahead as a battle for democracy itself. The GOP frontrunner continues to provide ample opportunity for Biden to return to this familiar theme.

This issue fueled Biden’s successful 2020 run, which he deemed “a battle for the soul of the nation.” And despite pushback from some Democrats, Biden leaned in hard again on that argument during last year’s midterms, warning that the extremist “MAGA Republicans” posed a threat to the republic’s foundation and rights.

Biden’s candid remarks Tuesday at a string of Boston fundraisers both reflected another example of the president saying something unscripted that surprised staff but also a window into his true thinking, according to the three people close to him.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said. “But we cannot let him win.”

Biden then struck a grave tone, warning that he’s “running against an election-denier-in-chief,” who is “determined to destroy American democracy.”

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore,” Biden told the crowd. “He’s telling us exactly what he wants to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

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