President Biden told voters on Monday that it will be left to them to judge Donald Trump for encouraging a mob to violently attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, hours after the Supreme Court issued a ruling granting U.S. Presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts. The decision means that Trump is unlikely to face a criminal trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election before voters go to the polls in November.
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Decrying the court’s decision, Biden said that the country was founded on the principle that there are “no kings in America,” but that the ruling issued Monday “almost certainly means there are virtually no limits” on what a President can do.
The Supreme Court decision played into Trump’s longstanding efforts to delay multiple criminal cases against him and set out a new principle that U.S. presidents are immune from prosecution for official actions they took while in office. Trump faces a criminal case in Georgia over his effort to pressure state officials to overturn Biden’s win in the state, and a federal prosecution in Washington, D.C. for actions he took that led his supporters to violently slam past police at the Capitol Building to stop the official certification of the results.
“The American people must decide if Donald Trump’s embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable,” Biden said, warning against entrusting the presidency to Trump while “knowing he’ll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it.”
Trump praised the court decision calling it “brilliantly written and wise” on his social media platform TruthSocial and predicting that the criminal cases against him would “disappear.”
While the court decision was a win for Trump, Biden’s campaign welcomed the opportunity to talk about something other than the fallout from Biden’s shaky debate performance, which has raised concerns among Democrats that he can’t win and serve a second term. Biden’s remarks brought him back to talking about a central theme of his campaign: the threat to democracy Trump poses.
Biden called the U.S. presidency the “most powerful office in the world” and said it was not only an office that tests your judgment but “perhaps even more importantly, it’s an office that can test your character.”
“The American people must decide if Donald Trump’s embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable,” Biden said.
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