Biden to target Trump in first 2024 campaign speech

President Joe Biden kickstarts his 2024 campaign Friday with a major speech warning that democracy is at risk fromDonald Trump, three years after the deadly January 6 US Capitol attack.
The 81-year-old will say the fight for democracy is a "sacred cause" in hisspeech, a day before the third anniversary of the Capitol assault by apro-Trump mob trying to overturn Biden's 2020 election win, US media said.
Either trailing or neck and neck with Trump in recent polls, the Democratwill frame his likely Republican rival as a threat to the nation in the addressnear the historic US independence war site of Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, reports BSS.
Biden did not speak to reporters as he left the White House on Fridayaboard the presidential helicopter, Marine One.
But campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Biden's election pitchfour years ago that he was leading a "battle for the soul of America" was morerelevant than ever.
"The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grownmore dire in the years since," she said in a statement.
The campaign push will continue Monday when the president visits a SouthCarolina church where a white supremacist shot dead nine Black parishioners in2015.
- Symbolism -
Trump was impeached but acquitted over the January 6 riots. The 77-year-oldnow faces a criminal trial on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election.
The US states of Colorado and Maine have barred him from standing inpresidential primaries on the grounds that he had engaged in insurrection overthe Capitol events. Trump has challenged both rulings.
But January 6 has become increasingly polarized in US politics -- a quarterof Americans believe that the FBI instigated the attack, a WashingtonPost-University of Maryland poll showed this week.
The venues for Biden's first speeches of 2024 are deliberately symbolic --the first, at a school near Valley Forge, where George Washington, the first USpresident, regrouped American forces fighting their British colonial rulersduring the bitter winter of 1777-8.
Biden's speech was originally scheduled for Saturday but brought forward bya day because of a looming winter storm.
"We chose Valley Forge as George Washington united the colonies there,"said principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.
- Poll worries -
The push comes after criticism from some Democrats that the Biden campaignhas gotten off to a slow start.
Biden lags behind Trump in some polls, and also has the worst approvalrating of any modern president at this stage in his term of office.
The president has failed to convince voters the economy is improving.
Despite unexpected US job growth in December, he acknowledged Friday in astatement that "some prices are still too high for too many Americans."
Migration remains a major headache, while there is division in his partyover his support for Israel's war on Hamas, and Congress is blocking his bidfor more funds for Ukraine.
Biden's refusal to mention Trump's multiple criminal cases, to avoid theappearance of influencing the judiciary, has also deprived him of one of hismost potent weapons.
But perhaps Biden's biggest vulnerability is his age: as America'soldest-ever president, he has suffered a series of trips and verbal slips.
"If the election were held tomorrow, President Biden would lose," WilliamGalston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.
Yet the Pennsylvania and South Carolina speeches show the Biden campaign isnow playing up a straight choice between him and Trump, even though the battlefor the Republican nomination doesn't even start until the Iowa caucuses onJanuary 15.
Biden's first TV ad of the year warned this week of an "extremist" threatto democracy, featuring images of the Capitol attack set to dramatic music.