Transcript: Biden’s first campaign speech of the 2024 election year

racy, not walk away from it.

Today, I make this sacred pledge to you: The defense, protection and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.

America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear: Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.

Yes, we’ll be voting on many issues: on the freedom to vote, and have your vote counted. On the freedom of choice.

The freedom to have a fair shot.

The freedom from fear.

And we’ll debate and disagree.

Without democracy, no progress is impossible. Think about it.

The alternative to democracy is dictatorship. The rule of one, not the rule of we, the people.

That’s what the soldiers of Valley Forge understood.

So was me, we have to understand it as well.

We’ve been blessed so long with a strong, stable democracy, it’s easy to forget why so many before us risked their lives and strengthened democracy.

What our lives would be without it.

Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind, to be who you are, to be who you want to be.

Democracy is about being able to bring about peaceful change.

Democracy. Democracy is how we open the doors of opportunity wider and wider with each successive generation, not notwithstanding our mistakes.

But if democracy falls, we’ll lose that freedom, we’ll lose the power of we, the people, to shape our destiny.

If you doubt me, look around the world.

Travel with me as I meet with other heads of state throughout the world.

Look at the authoritarian leaders and dictators Trump says he admires. He out loud says he admires.

I won’t go through them all. It would take too long.

Look, remember how he first, how he refers to what he calls love letter exchanges between he and the dictator of North Korea?

Those women and men out there in the audience who’s ever fought for an American military. Did you ever believe you’d hear a president say something like that?

His admiration for Putin?

I could go on.

And look at what these autocrats are doing to limit freedom in their countries.

They’re limiting freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to assemble, women’s rights, LGBQ rights, people are going to jail. So much more.

It’s true. The push and pull of American history is not a fairy tale.

Every stride forward in America is met with ferocious backlash, many times, from those who fear progress and those who exploit that fear for their own personal gain.

From those who traffic in lies, told for power and profit. For those who are driven by grievance and grift, consumed by conspiracy and victimhood.

From those who seek to bury history and ban books.

Did you ever think you’d be at a political event and talk about book banning, for a presidential and a presidential election?

The choice in contest between those forces, those competing forces, between solidarity and division, is perennial. But this time it’s so different.

You can’t have a contest, you can’t have a contest, if you see politics as an all-out war instead of a peaceful way to resolve our differences.

All-out war is what Trump wants.

That’s why he doesn’t understand the most fundamental truth about this country.

Unlike other nations on Earth, America is not built on ethnicity, religion, geography.

We’re the only nation in the history of the world built on an idea, not hyperbole, built on an idea.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.

It’s an idea, declared in the Declaration, created in a way that we’ve viewed everybody as equal and should be treated equal throughout their lives.

We’ve never fully lived up to that. We have a long way to go, but we’ve never walked away from the idea.

We’ve never walked away from it.

And I promise you, I will not let Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans force us to walk away now.

We’re living in an era where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda.

The American people know it, and they’re standing bravely in the breach.

Remember, after 2020, January sixth insurrection to undo the election in which more Americans had voted than any other in American history.

America saw the threat posed to the country and they voted them out in 2022. Historic midterm election. In state after state, election after election, the election deniers were defeated.

Now, in 2024, Trump is running as the denier-in-chief, the election denier-in-chief.

Once again, he’s saying he won’t honor the results of the election if he loses.

Trump says he doesn’t understand, or he still doesn’t understand the basic truth. That is, you can’t love your country only when you win.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I’ll keep my commitment to be president for all of America. Whether you voted for me or not, I’ve done it for the last three years and I’ll continue to do it.

Together, we can keep proving that America is still a country that believes in decency, dignity, honesty, honor, truth.

We still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.

We still believe the vast majority of us still believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at making.

We’re still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.

I tell you from my experience working with leaders around the world, and I mean this sincerely, not a joke, that America is still viewed as a beacon of democracy for the world.

I can’t tell you how many, how many world leaders, and I know all of them, virtually all of them, grab my arm in private and say, “He can’t win. Tell me. No, my country will be at risk.”

Think of how many countries, Tommy, you know that are on the edge.

Imagine.

We still believe in we the people, and that includes all of us. Not some of us.

Let me close with this.

In the cold winter of 1777, George Washington and his American troops to Valley Forge waged a battle on behalf of a revolutionary idea, that everyday people like where I come from, and the vast majority of you, not a king or a dictator, that everyday people can govern themselves without a king or a dictator.

In fact, in the rotunda of the Capitol, there’s a giant painting of General George Washington, not President Washington.

And he is resigning his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

A European king at the time said after he won the revolution, now’s the time for him to declare his kingship.

But instead, the mob that attacked the Capitol, waving Trump flags and Confederate flags, stormed right past that portrait.

That image of George Washington gave them no pause, but it should have.

The artist who painted that portrait memorialized that moment because he said it was, quote, one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, end of quote.

George Washington was the height of his power, having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth.

Could have held on to power as long as he wanted.

He could have made himself not a future president, but a future monarch, in effect.

And by the way, when he got elected president, he could have stayed for two, three, four or five terms till he died.

But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops at Valley Forge had fought for.

In America, genuine leaders, democratic leaders with a small D don’t hold on to power relentlessly.

Our leaders return power to the people and they do it willingly because that’s the deal.

You do your duty.

You serve your country.

And ours is a country worthy of service as many Republican presidents and Democratic presidents have shown over the years.

We’re not perfect, but at our best, we face on, we face head on the good, the bad, the truth of who we are.

We look in the mirror and ultimately never pretend we’re something we’re not.

That’s what great nations do.

And we’re a great nation. We’re the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We really are.

That’s the America I see in our future.

We get up. We carry on.

We never bow. We never bend.

We speak of possibilities, not carnage. We’re not weighed down by grievances.

We don’t foster fear. We don’t walk around as victims.

We take charge of our destiny. We get our job done with the help of the people we find in America, who find their place in a changing world and dream and build a future that not only they but all people deserve a shot at.

We don’t believe, none of you believe America is failing.

We know America is winning.

That’s American patriotism.

It’s not winning because of Joe Biden. It’s winning.

This is the first national election since January sixth insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. Since that moment.

We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is who are we?

That’s what’s at stake. Who are we?

In the year ahead, as you talk to your family and friends, cast your ballots, the power is in your hands.

After all we’ve been through in our history, from independence to civil war to two world wars to a pandemic to insurrection, I refuse to believe that in 2024 we Americans will choose to walk away from what’s made us the greatest nation in the history of the world.

Freedom, liberty. Democracy is still a sacred cause, and there’s no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than America.

That’s why, I’ve said it many times, that’s why I’ve never been more optimistic about our future, and I’ve been doing this a hell of a long time.

Just to remember who we are.

With patience and fortitude, with one heart, we are the United States of America, for God’s sake. I mean it.

There’s nothing. I believe with every fiber there’s nothing beyond our capacity if we act together and decently with one another.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I mean it. We’re the only nation in the world that’s come out of every crisis stronger than we went into that crisis. And that was true yesterday.

It is true today. And I guarantee you will be true tomorrow.

God Bless you all. And may God protect our troops.