Joe Biden's campaign team released a first TV spot on Thursday, January 4, for the US president's re-election in 2024, warning of the "extreme" threat to democracy by airing footage of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The commercial, titled "Because," will air for the first time on television on Saturday, exactly three years after the attack on Donald Trump's supporters in Washington that claimed the lives of five people.
"We all have to ask ourselves today: What are we going to do to maintain our democracy?" the 81-year-old Democrat asks in the first campaign clip with a passage from a speech he gave last year in the state of Arizona. "Something dangerous is happening in the United States. There is an extremist movement that does not share the fundamental values of our democracy," he said in the video posted on social media on Thursday. In the nearly minute-long spot, Biden makes no mention of Donald Trump, his Republican rival whom he defeated in 2020.
A Fight for American Democracy
But against a backdrop of dramatic music, the clip shows several images of pro-Trump signs held by his supporters on the day of the invasion of the Capitol, a hangman's rope brought in by rioters, as well as photos of white supremacists carrying torches at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Biden's campaign team is increasingly portraying the election as a fight for American democracy against the Trump threat. The Democratic president is expected to deliver a similar speech on Friday at a campaign event in Pennsylvania.
Current polls show the two contenders for the White House neck and neck, even as Donald Trump faces several lawsuits, including one on the Jan. 6 assault. "This spot reminds us that this election can truly determine the fate of American democracy," Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Joe Biden's campaign manager, said in a statement, adding that Republicans have "stepped up" their threats to undermine the election.