President Joe Biden said on Friday (October 4) that he was not convinced that the US elections in November would be peaceful, citing incendiary comments from Republican candidate Donald Trump, who still rejects his 2020 defeat. Biden’s warning is came as lawmakers and analysts expressed concern over increasingly bellicose campaign language ahead of the vote.
Trump – who survived an assassination attempt in July and another apparent plot in September – alleged widespread fraud following his loss to Biden in 2020, and pro-Trump rioters, angered by his false claims, ransacked the Capitol.
“I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know if it will be peaceful,” Biden told reporters as he discussed the election.
“The things that Trump said and the things he said last time when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.”
Trump was impeached in 2021 for inciting insurrection after hundreds of his supporters – urged by the defeated Republican to “fight like hell” – beat police as they smashed Capitol windows and broke through doors.
“Angry crowd”
He was charged in what prosecutors say was a “private criminal attempt” to overturn the election that resulted in violence.
“When all else failed,” the indictment reads, Trump ordered an “angry mob” to disrupt the certification of the vote. Trump — who is scheduled to return this weekend to the site of his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania — has long been criticized for his violent rhetoric.
Biden joined critics in the first appearance of his presidency in the White House briefing room to tout Democrats’ economic achievements as his Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to take on Trump.
Trump was scheduled to campaign Friday in Georgia, a swing state narrowly claimed by Biden four years ago but won by Trump in 2016 — and one of the biggest prizes on the 2024 electoral map.
The Republican aggressively inserted himself into Georgia politics after his 2020 defeat, pushing for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in a now-infamous phone call, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Biden victory.
Trump, 78, has been charged with racketeering by state prosecutors, in a case that is on hold and expected to resume after the election. He furiously denies any wrongdoing.
Trump blamed Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for refusing to help him overturn his defeat, and he tried unsuccessfully to oust them both.
“union buster”
Trump’s foiled revenge plot — and his repeated smears against Kemp at rallies and on social media — have raised questions about his influence over his party in one of the nation’s key battlegrounds.
But Trump and Kemp have since buried the hatchet, and the governor has endorsed the Republican presidential bid. The two men will deliver remarks together after receiving a briefing in Augusta on the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, the deadliest storm to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005.
Harris, who is neck-and-neck with Trump in seven key states, was scheduled to rally Friday in Michigan — a labor stronghold that epitomizes the decline of U.S. manufacturing in the 1980s. The Democratic candidate was expected to blame Trump and his running mate JD Vance to jeopardize Michigan auto jobs.
“This is a man who fought only for himself. This is a man who has been a union buster throughout his career,” she said during an earlier stop in Detroit . Harris, 59, is expected tonight in Flint, a majority-black city where a scandal in the 2010s over lead-contaminated water highlighted government mismanagement and disproportionate harm to poor and non-poor communities. white.
Harris’ campaign has announced that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, will fight for her in Pennsylvania and other key states starting next week, as she courts undecided voters in the heartland of the U.S. United.
