![]() ![]() Earlier this month, Biden and congressional Democrats passed the much-anticipated Inflation Reduction Act into law, which delivered on several key climate provisions Biden had promised on the 2020 campaign trail. Last week, President Biden announced a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for up to 43 million borrowers. Democrats are looking to hold onto their slim legislative majorities emphasizing their achievements and asking voters to keep control of government in their hands. I left the party the day Donald Trump got the nomination. I was a registered Republican from 1970 to 2016. “Where the hell are we?” said Biden, questioning the “idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, ‘If such and such happens, there’ll be blood in the street’?”īiden is expected to continue his blitz for Democratic candidates in the run-up to November’s elections. I agree with much of what Bret Stephens says about President Biden’s speech. “You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on January 6 patriots,” Biden said in an appearance earlier this week, singling out Graham’s statements as contributing to the climate of political violence. It was about protecting against it.Graham says there will be riots in the streets if Trump is prosecuted /oE6MyuqjeA- Acyn August 28, 2022 But if you listened to Biden’s words and observe his actions - which took place as Trump is effectively moving toward launching a paramilitary - it's clear that this speech wasn’t about praising or glorifying martial law. And I understand why that symbolism, amplified perhaps by the dramatic red backlighting, may have felt ominous. Personally, I wouldn’t have used Marines in my photo-op. The military's allegiance is to the state, not to a political party or leader. And that’s obviously appropriate, since the civilian-military divide remains a bedrock of democracy. Biden hasn’t actually tried to bring the military into political affairs and civilian life. Trump wanted the military to serve as a personal security force - he longed to repress dissidents, and to deploy the National Guard on Jan. But Biden was in reality responding to Trump's attempted politicization of it.īoth Trump and now Biden have played with the symbolism of the military’s relationship with democracy in political oratory, but toward radically different ends: Trump wished to use the military to subvert democracy, while Biden hopes that the military will help protect it. Some analysts criticized Biden for symbolically politicizing the military. He later called on Americans to vote in the upcoming. In 2020, more than half of the military’s officer corps said they strongly disapproved of the president, a phenomenon likely explained by military officers’ attachment to legal norms and propriety, and their relatively high levels of education (one of the most common predictors of opposition to Trump). 'As your president, I will fight for democracy with every fiber of my being, and I'm asking every American to join me,' Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, Mark Esper, publicly shot down his calls to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have deployed troops to the streets. Milley and other military officials talked Trump down after he called on them to shoot protesters in the legs, and they covertly maneuvered to ensure a peaceful transfer of power as Trump manufactured lies about election fraud. Top military officials were instrumental in thwarting Trump’s insurrection attempts when he was in office. “We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it.” He implied those Marines, who stood with him in front of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was approved and where the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, are a key part of protecting democracy.īiden’s faith (probably) isn’t misplaced. “For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it’s not,” Biden said. It was an answer to Trump's attempts to thwart a peaceful transfer of power and mobilize the military against democracy during his tenure. By placing Marines in his periphery, Biden aimed to showcase his faith in the military apparatus and its ability to back the democratic order - to defend against future attacks on the electoral system. Biden focused in his remarks on identifying Trump and his most hardcore supporters as a danger to the republic, with their disregard for democratic rule and their propensity for political violence. But that doesn't really explain why they were at this specific event. The White House said in a statement on Friday that it was a gesture of "respect" for these service members.
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