A televised speech in prime time is something that US presidents don’t often do. Although they sometimes lower the bar, to address the nation they usually choose very special moments and powerful reasons. The Gulf War, the fall of Saddam Hussein, the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the coronavirus pandemic, and the financial crisis are among them. This Thursday, Joe Biden has added another reason to the list: the risk that democracy will succumb in the United States because of Donald Trump. “For a long time, we have convinced ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it isn’t. We have to defend it. Protect her. defend her. Each and every one of us”, Biden assured in a solemn tone in a 24-minute speech. “Donald Trump and the Republicans MAGA [siglas del Make America Great Again, el lema de Trump] they represent the extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” he said, expressly mentioning the former president. Biden often refers to him as his “predecessor” or “the previous president.” “I want to be clear,” he said after quoting him for the first time. The president has chosen a symbolic site (“the place where it all began,” he said), the Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia, in the center of the city for his speech on “the battle for the soul of the nation”, a battle that is played out in the upcoming legislative elections, he said. In the background, illuminated in red and blue, Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 and the United States Constitution in 1787. To his left, the cracked Liberty Bell, claim of that small democracy theme park visited by thousands of tourists. In the democracy of the United States, Biden sees a crack like the one in the bell and has pointed directly to the extreme Trumpists : “The MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Towards an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry the one you love”, he said after clarifying that he is not referring to “all Republicans, not even the majority of Republicans. “But there is no doubt that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country”, he added. Biden has attacked electoral denialism, Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential elections with the hoax that they had been stolen, which he has called “ conspiracy theories”. “You cannot love your country only when you win”, he has reproached Trump. The president has repeated over and over again the historic motto “we the people” on which the values of American democracy are based. Outside the park a few police sirens have been heard. Trump supporters have come to protest against Biden with the slogan they use as a covert foul insult: “Let’s go Brandon” (Come on, Brandon) or directly, the original version: “Fuck Joe Biden” (Fuck you, Joe Biden) . As people booed them, Biden has said: “You have a right to be outraged. This is a democracy”. mandate, in which the entire House of Representatives and just over a third of the Senate are renewed. And for not being directed against an attack or a foreign threat, but against the opposition party and its de facto leader, Donald Trump. In addition, although Philadelphia is the capital of the Independence of the United States, it is also the most populous city in Pennsylvania, one of the most disputed states in those elections. With this, Biden shows that he is determined to use the resources of the White House at his scope to influence the electoral result of November 8 from his institutional position. In just one week he visits Pennsylvania three times and already on the first occasion he had a speech against Trumpism in a campaign tone in Wilkes-Barre. On Monday he repeats in Pittsburgh, the industrial capital of Pennsylvania, taking advantage of Labor Day, in which he will also travel to Wisconsin, another state in dispute. Thus, more than the content of his speech this Friday, what is relevant is his solemn wrapping. At a party rally Thursday last week in Maryland, he already said: “The MAGA Republicans not only threaten our personal rights and economic security. They are a threat to our own democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace political violence.” In another, that same day, he called the ideology of the extreme Trumpists “semi-fascism”. And on Tuesday, in Wilkes Barre, in a presidential address, he also attacked the Republicans: “For God’s sake, whose side are you on? They cannot say that they defend law and order and call those who stormed the Capitol patriots, ”he said. A speech like the one this Thursday is one more step in that direction. The Democrats are making a comeback in the polls thanks to some of their own achievements, but also because Trump, with the record of Mar-a-Lago, has returned to the spotlight and further inflamed civil-war rhetoric and political violence in part of the Republican Party. “Political violence is never appropriate. Period”, Biden said in his speech. The Republicans wanted the elections to be a referendum on Biden and promised themselves a landslide victory, but they have found that they can end up being a referendum on Trump, or a repeat of the 2020 presidential confrontation Biden knows that this favors him, especially among independent voters, less identified with any of the parties and who can tilt the result. “Vote, vote, vote”, he has insisted despite being a presidential speech, calling not to remain impassive in the face of “the continuous attack on democracy”. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has also bragged about his legislative achievements, but has not mentioned the word abortion, which many Democrats see as a rallying cry for their voters. The question is how appropriate it is to put the White House in such a way at the service of his election strategy. For Marc Thiessen, who wrote the speeches for George W. Bush, it is not: “For the incumbent president to appropriate the institution of a prime-time presidential address—which has been used by his predecessors to comfort us in the tragedy, announce military action, and defend major political initiatives—and use it for partisan attacks is not a legitimate use of the forum. There is simply no excuse for the networks to give Biden free air time for this speech, let alone do so without giving Republicans equal time to respond. If Biden wants to broadcast a campaign ad in prime time attacking Republicans, he should have to pay for it, ”he wrote this Thursday in an article in The Washington Post. The truth is that none of the three big networks has broadcast the speech. NBC aired Law & Order; CBS, Little Sheldon, and ABC, a game show. Of course, the conservative Fox News, despite being a news channel, has pretended not to exist while Biden intervened. Only CNN and some other minor channels have given the speech live. 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