Scenes on a moving billboard circling the location of the first 2024 presidential debate Former President Donald Trump’s exhibit will be on display in Atlanta Phone call 2020 to Georgia’s top election official about finding enough votes to put him ahead of Joe Biden, press conferences with two Republican former officials supporting Biden and citing democracy as the reason. And a campaign ad narrated by a Michigan police chief criticizing Trump for not stopping the campaign 6 January2021, attacks on the US Capitol.
Here’s how Mr. Biden’s campaign and his party are highlighting Jan. 6 and Trump’s role in his efforts to overthrow political power. Elections 2020 in the run-up to Thursday evening’s debate.
The mobile billboard, paid for by the DNC, will highlight Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, urging him to find 11,780 additional votes to help him win the state in 2020, according to details first shared with CBS News.
The billboard also raises the issue of democracy abortion bans, because it shows news clips about Trump’s platform and comments on abortion bans. It ends with the narrator saying, “Our freedoms are under attack. Donald Trump is to blame. Don’t let him do it again.”
This joins three other DNC billboard locations in the Atlanta metro area criticizing Trump on similar themes, including a billboard that has been up since Wednesday drawing attention to the former president’s statements. 34 felony charges in the ‘hush money’ trial in New York.
“Donald. Welcome to Atlanta for the first time since I was convicted as a felon. Congratulations — or whatever…” the highway billboard reads, in both English and Spanish.
DNC spokesperson Abhi Rahman says the pre-debate activity is intended to “remind voters how [Trump] tried to dismantle Georgia’s democracy,” and that it is the first time the committee has referenced Trump’s post-2020 efforts in Georgia.
“Voters will see tonight the stark contrast between President Biden, a true leader who wakes up every day and fights for the American people… and Donald Trump, a convicted felon who fights only for himself,” Rahman added.
Prosecutors inside Fulton Countya crucial county in Georgia’s 2020 elections, has been investigating Mr. Trump and 18 others over an alleged illegal scheme to overturn his election loss in the state to Mr. Biden. That case has been halted as a separate Georgia appeals court reviews a decision to keep Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on the case after it emerged she had a romantic relationship with a prosecutor she hired to help with the Trump case.
Democracy has been a common theme for Mr. Biden and his campaign as they seek to re-energize their coalition. And the country is high on voters’ priority lists in recent polls: mid-June CBS News poll found that the “state of democracy” ranked behind only the economy and inflation as important factors among likely voters, with Democratic voters holding these in particular high regard.
But the Biden campaign is also using Republicans to argue against Trump about democracy.
After announcing his support for Mr. Biden on Wednesday, former Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a former member of the Jan. 6 House select committee that investigated the riot, spoke at a news conference in Atlanta hosted by the Biden campaign, targeting January 6. He was joined by former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, another Republican who has endorsed Mr. Biden, and former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“I think democracy is the most important issue and we need to talk about it, because if you don’t … democracy cannot survive if leaders, frankly, don’t care about it,” Kinzinger told reporters on Wednesday.
Kinzinger and Duncan both cited Trump’s actions in 2020, when he made baseless and untrue claims about a “rigged” or “stolen” election, and his response on January 6 as reasons to vote against him.
‘We don’t expect it [Biden] to become a Republican. We want you to stay true to who you are. We want someone who can defend democracy. That’s it,” Kinzinger added.
In a pre-debate memo on Wednesday, senior advisers to the Trump campaign noted Mr. Biden’s focus on democracy and pointed to a Washington Post poll of swing voters that showed higher ratings for Trump than Biden on ‘protecting democracy’.
Outside Atlanta, Georgia and National Republican officials held a “Protect the Vote” event in November that encouraged Trump supporters to become poll workers and poll workers.
When asked if he’s concerned that Trump may refer to the 2020 election as “stolen” during Thursday’s debate, this could undermine the GOP’s efforts to eliminate all voting options (early, mail-in, etc.). promote, can harm. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley objected, saying that election infrastructure and building a “protective voting program” are the priorities.
“What we expect from the president is to tell people what he’s going to do in the next four years and how this is going to make America a better place,” he said in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Jacob Rosen contributed reporting.
