Joe Biden launched a fierce attack on him Donald Trump yesterday, Thursday, warning that his predecessor is a threat to American democracy, while highlighting his differences with his potential opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

For his speech, which the White House said was his fourth on the topic of democracy, Biden chose an event held in Arizona in memory of Republican Sen. John McCain, a former Air Force pilot who had been a prisoner of war. in Vietnam.

“Something dangerous is happening in America,” the Democratic president said from the Center for the Arts in Tempe, Arizona, a state that could prove key in the presidential election.

He estimated that the ideology of his Republican opponent and his supporters “threatens the very existence of our nation.”

“Democracies do not necessarily die by gun violence. They can die when people are silent, when people do not mobilize or when they do not condemn attacks on democracy. When people are ready to give up the most valuable thing because they are overwhelmed by resentment, frustration, fatigue, a sense of exclusion,” Biden said.

The Republican former president, a strong favorite to win the party’s nomination for the 2024 election, is accused by the justice system of playing a major role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Biden, in a rare move, referred to his opponent by name during his speech yesterday as well as in excerpts of his speeches in order to condemn his remarks.

“Trump says the Constitution gives him, and I’m saying exactly that, the right to do whatever he wants as president,” the Democrat complained, calling it a “dangerous view,” while also attacking the “conspiracy theories” he spreads. the Republican as well as his desire to “divide” the country.

Biden assessed that his predecessor “is not guided by the Constitution, by a sense of duty or by respect for his fellow citizens, but by revenge and malice.”

He was referring specifically to Trump’s March speech at the Republican convention: “I will have my revenge on you.”

“I believe very strongly that the defining element of our democracy is our Constitution,” the Democratic president emphasized.

When asked about the Biden speech, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang said “far-left Democrats, now led by the corrupt Joe Biden, are the greatest threat the American democracy has ever faced.”

“There is no doubt that the Republican party today is led (…) by the Trumps,” Biden said.

The American president particularly expressed his indignation at the silence of the Republicans after Trump’s “hateful” statements against the head of the US armed forces, General Mark Milley.

The billionaire Republican implied that Milley is guilty of treason and added that this is an offense punishable by the death penalty.

“The more people vote, the more the whole nation participates, the stronger democracy will be,” Biden said.

The American president had reduced the defense of the “soul” of America to a key axis of his confrontation with Trump in 2020 and is expected to do so again during the election campaign next year.