Biden, Trump potential rematch could include debate over democracy

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, preparing for the increasing likelihood of a rematch with former President Donald Trump, is positioning democracy as a key issue as Trump continues to hint at taking an authoritarian approach if he's reelected.

Over the past month, Trump has doubled down on rhetoric that has drawn comparisons to words spoken by authoritarian leaders, embracing the notion of acting as a “dictator for one day” to address immigration and oil drilling, calling liberal opponents “vermin” and saying migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The remarks have driven Biden's campaign to unleash one of its most aggressive lines of attack against Trump. The campaign wrote “Trump parrots Hitler” on the social media site X, posting comparisons between Trump's statements and those of Adolf Hitler.

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore,” Biden told a group of donors in Boston recently. “He’s telling us exactly what he wants to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

Biden is scheduled to start the year off with two campaign speeches aimed at casting Trump as a threat to democracy, according to the Biden campaign.

On Saturday, Biden will mark the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump crowd with a speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a key Revolutionary War site. On Monday, Biden will speak at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black worshippers in 2015.

“Our message is clear and as simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said during a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday.

Trump, who has denied a Hitler link, has opened a new line of attack on Biden as a “destroyer of democracy.” Trump contends his criminal indictment in four separate jurisdictions was brought by Democrats and Biden supporters looking to derail his reelection bid. The White House repeatedly has pushed back, saying Biden does not play a role in Department of Justice investigations.

The back-and-forth between Biden and Trump underscores how a potential rematch could go beyond staple issues such as the economy, abortion and guns to focus on the broader theme of the future of American democracy.

“It is very common throughout American history for politicians to cast their opponents as would-be dictators,” said Jeffrey Engel, a presidential historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “We heard that about Andrew Jackson. We heard that about Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and on and on.”

Engel said what is “significant” about the current race is that unlike past candidates, Trump is a former sitting president who publicly has asserted on his social media platform that parts of the Constitution should be “terminated” to overturn his 2020 defeat to Biden.

“Every other time that we've had someone accused of being a would-be dictator, they either had no track record, had never been president, or they were the president, and the question was, what are they going to do with the power they already had? We've never had the situation where somebody is being accused of being a dictator, who is saying if I had a second bite at this apple, I would do things without the Constitution,” Engel said.

Rhetoric stirs debate

In the past few months, Trump has called for “retribution” against his political enemies, said he will use his presidential powers to “go after” Biden, and in a Veterans Day speech described liberal political opponents as a “threat from within” — all language previously used by authoritarian leaders, including Hitler and Benito Mussolini, according to historians.

Trump’s rhetoric, much like his initial 2016 campaign, continues to stir debate among supporters who assert his remarks often are said in jest to provoke a response, and those who contend his language echoes that of dictators.

“He was being funny on the one hand, but also making the point that, ‘I’m going to undo executive orders that [Biden] did, which doesn’t make me any more dictator than he is,’ ” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told reporters on Capitol Hill recently. “The people who have concerns aren’t people who would ever vote for him. This is part of his appeal, is that authenticity, and the point he made in it is really good.”

Trump also privately has discussed consolidating power around him should he be reelected — including changing civil-service rules to fire tens of thousands of federal workers to be replaced by his loyalists, according to The New York Times.

Meena Bose, director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University, said any plans to stack the federal workforce with a president’s loyalists could disrupt the checks and balances of government.

“You need a combination of individuals and institutions to sustain a robust democracy, and if a political leader violates those constitutional boundaries, then the ability of checking an elected official, particularly a president, is very difficult,” Bose said.

Biden has used Trump’s public comments to cast the former president as a threat to democracy, accusing him of standing by idly for hours during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a largely pro-Trump crowd looking to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

“I don’t think anyone doubts our democracy is even more at risk than in 2020,” Biden said at a fundraiser in Boston earlier this month. “This time, we’re running against the election-denier-in-chief.”

Biden, 81, told a different gathering of supporters in Boston that Trump’s likely candidacy was one of the key reasons he decided to run again.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said. He backpedaled those remarks, telling reporters hours later he would run regardless of the nominee.

Trump, 77, is facing criminal cases in Manhattan; Fulton County, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; and South Florida, and has argued that Democratic prosecutors are trying to damage his reelection bid.

Biden “has been weaponizing government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant,” Trump told supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Dec. 3.

White House officials have maintained that Biden has not been involved in the cases. They include felony charges brought by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith that accuse Trump of “conspiring to defraud the United States” and “conspiring to disenfranchise voters,” with his efforts to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 victory.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in all four cases.

Are voters listening?

A number of recent polls show Biden and Trump fairly even in a hypothetical rematch.

Trump remains far ahead of Republicans Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis among GOP primary voters, according to the polls.

Democratic campaign strategist Hank Sheinkopf said Biden’s campaign should be concerned that Trump’s “strongman” rhetoric could be registering with voters, particularly in Midwest swing states, who are concerned with inflation and the growing number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border.

“In states where heavy loads of voters are frightened with the economic conditions changing, it's a strong message that does work,” Sheinkopf said.

Even so, Trump's rhetoric could cost him support among swing suburban voters, like those on Long Island, said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.

“If Trump is going to win, he can't just do it with his rural base. He needs to get back some of those suburban voters he lost in 2020, and language like that cannot possibly help him with moderates who already have concerns about him,” Levy said. “Suburban voters tend to shy away from extremism of any sort.” 

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.