By SEUNG MIN KIM and JONATHAN J. COOPER
PHOENIX — President Joe Biden is ready to argue “there is something dangerous happening in America” during a speech in Arizona on Thursday as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Although voting in the 2024 Republican primary doesn’t begin for months, Biden’s focus reflects Trump’s status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party’s nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Biden’s speech is his fourth in a series of presidential addresses on the topic, a cause that is a touchstone for him as he tries to remain in office even in the face of low approval ratings and widespread concern from voters about his age, 80.
He’s also facing fresh pressure on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans are holding the first hearing in their impeachment inquiry.
On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, Biden visited the Capitol and accused Trump of continuing to hold a “dagger” at democracy’s throat. Biden closed out the summer that year in the shadow of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, decrying Trumpism as a menace to democratic institutions.
And in November, as voters were casting ballots in the midterm elections, Biden again sounded a clarion call to protect democratic institutions.
The location for Thursday’s speech, as was the case for the others, was chosen for effect. It will be near Arizona State University, which houses the McCain Institute, named after the late Arizona Sen. John McCain — a friend of Biden and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who spent…
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