A marquee promoting a fundraiser with President Joe Biden is on display outside the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York, Monday, Sept. 18, 2023.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Joe Biden on Monday told a packed Broadway theater full of big-name stars hosting a fundraiser in his honor that he was running for reelection because Donald Trump was determined to destroy the nation.
Democracy is at stake, he told the audience at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Hate groups have been emboldened, he said. Books are being banned. Children go to school fearing shootings.
“Let there be no question, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” he said, referring to the former president’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.” “And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy.”
Biden also accused Trump and his allies of bowing down to authoritarians: “I will not side with dictators like Putin. Maybe Trump and his MAGA friends can bow down but I won’t.”
It was the among the president’s strongest rebukes of the Republican front-runner and former president, who is facing criminal charges for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. And it comes as the political pressure is ramping up from Republicans in the House who have opened an impeachment inquiry into Biden in an effort to tie him to his son Hunter’s business dealings and distract from Trump’s legal peril.
Biden said he wanted to send the “strongest and most powerful message possible, that political violence in America is never never never acceptable.”
Biden, who is set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, arrived in New York on Sunday evening so he could squeeze in the fundraisers as the end of the quarter for federal election reporting nears.
A Times Square billboard not far from the concert advertised “Broadway for Biden.” Sara Bareilles, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt were among those appearing on behalf of the…
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