The Biden White House condemned Donald Trump for promising, if re-elected president, to “root out” opponents within US society he called “communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin”.
“Employing words like ‘vermin’ to describe anyone who makes use of their basic right to criticise the government ‘echoes dictators’ like Hitler and Mussolini,” the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, quoting Washington Post coverage of Trump’s remarks.
“Using terms like that about dissent would be unrecognisable to our founders, but horrifyingly recognisable to American veterans who put on their country’s uniform in the 1940s. President Biden believes in his oath to our constitution, and in American democracy. He works to protect both every day.”
Trump is the clear frontrunner to face Joe Biden in an election rematch next year, enjoying vast leads for the Republican nomination in battleground and national polls despite facing 91 criminal charges, including election subversion, and assorted civil trials including a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.
Trump leads or is close to Biden in numerous swing state polls.
The former president spoke in Claremont, New Hampshire, on Saturday, in the middle of the Veterans Day weekend.
“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” said Trump, who was impeached, for a second time, for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress in an attempt to stay in power.
On Monday, Bates said: “We do not comment in the 2024 presidential election.”
But he added: “The nation just observed Veterans Day, recognising the sacred memory of every American who risked their lives to defend our freedom.”
Referring to previously reported remarks by Trump about US servicemen and women, Bates said: “Veterans who are absolutely not ‘suckers’ or ‘losers’ … as President Biden has said, deserve our greatest respect.”
Trump has also said he would if re-elected consider suspending the US constitution in order to achieve his aims.
Bates said: “Suspending the constitution would gut the protection of freedom that defines our country, and for which so many brave service members sacrificed everything. That abuse of power would put the rights of all Americans in unprecedented danger.”
