A Fiery Biden, Ignoring Critics, Attacks Trump to Chants of ‘Lock Him Up’

 

President Biden on Friday strove to turn the nation’s attention back to former President Donald J. Trump, delivering a fiery and energetic speech in battleground Michigan that painted his Republican rival as a convict, a rapist and a cheater while simultaneously attacking the news media for an insufficient focus on such misdeeds.

Even as Mr. Biden faces mounting pressure from congressional Democrats and major donors, he largely ignored the brewing Democratic revolt over his refusal to drop out of the race, beyond an emphatic statement that “I am running, and we’re going to win.”

The president’s defiance, and the crowd’s enthusiastic response, helped give the Biden event at a Detroit high school gym the flavor of a Trump rally at times. When Mr. Biden referred to his political opponent, there were chants of “Lock him up” — which the president did not discourage. When he criticized news media coverage, big cheers followed, with his supporters turning to boo and point fingers at reporters.

Mr. Biden thundered that his rival was a “convicted criminal” and a “business fraud,” and said that he had “raped” the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom Mr. Trump was found liable of sexually abusing by a civil court.

In all, the 35-minute speech was a version of Mr. Biden that has been absent since he began his re-election campaign — and maybe one not seen since he was on a presidential ticket with Barack Obama. After two weeks of Democratic panic since his distressing debate performance, plummeting donations and polls that show him falling further behind Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden acted as if he was in the presidential race to stay.

“I’m the nominee of the Democratic Party, the only Democrat or Republican who has beaten Donald Trump ever,” said Mr. Biden, whose remarks were greeted by loud chants of “Don’t go, Joe” and “Don’t you quit.”

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The crowd chanted “Four more years” as Mr. Biden spoke at Renaissance High School in Detroit.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

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Mr. Biden made an unannounced visit to a Detroit bar and grill before his rally.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

The problem for the president may be that far fewer voters will have watched his Detroit performance than the 50 million viewers who saw his debate against Mr. Trump — and that he will need to repeat such an energetic showing over and over to restore confidence.

Polls show that majorities of Americans, and even of Democrats, think that Mr. Biden, 81, is too old to serve a second term; a New York Times poll released after the debate found that 74 percent of voters believed he should not run again.

All week, as Mr. Biden has fought to stem defections from Democrats in Congress, he has all but begged allies to turn their focus away from his political and physical deficiencies and instead focus on Mr. Trump, 78. During a video call with top donors on Monday, Mr. Biden told them: “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.”

It took the president four days to follow through on that himself.

But so much damage has already been done. Twenty congressional Democrats have called for Mr. Biden to drop out and let someone else be the nominee.

Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, a progressive Democrat who has not called for Mr. Biden to step aside, said on Friday that “100 percent of the phone calls into our office are asking me to ask the president to step out of the race.”

Although the actress Octavia Spencer attended Mr. Biden’s speech, several prominent Michigan Democrats were absent, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters and Representative Elissa Slotkin, who is running to succeed the retiring Ms. Stabenow.

In a statement on social media soon after Mr. Biden landed, Ms. Whitmer wrote, “Motor City is all in for Biden-Harris.”

Ms. Whitmer, a co-chair of the Biden campaign, has ruled out running for president this year, even if Mr. Biden were to drop out, but that has not ended speculation about her candidacy. In a CNN interview on Wednesday, she said it “wouldn’t hurt” if Mr. Biden underwent a cognitive exam to reassure supporters of his health and fitness.

In a video call with donors on Tuesday, Ms. Slotkin noted that she was running for the Senate because Ms. Stabenow, 74, was “doing a radical thing and passing the torch.”

On the defensive lately, Mr. Biden has had few opportunities to talk about his plans for a second term, something he tried to remedy on Friday. He promised that his first 100 days would be “all about working people.” He said he would enact a host of liberal goals, some more realistic than others, including making Roe v. Wade “the law of the land,” raising the federal minimum wage, signing a bill to protect voting rights, banning assault weapons and ending medical debt.

He also tried to put the spotlight on Project 2025, a series of far-reaching policy proposals by Mr. Trump’s allies that the Biden campaign hopes to make central to the race.

In nearly 900 pages, Project 2025 lays out, among many other recommendations, plans for rejecting the idea of abortion as health care, shredding climate protections and making it easier to fire career federal government officials and replace them with loyalists.

“You’ve heard of it!” a pleased Mr. Biden told the crowd when it started booing the conservative policy blueprint.

The Democratic National Committee is putting up billboards in battleground states that say in English and Spanish: “Trump’s plan to be a dictator on Day 1: Project 2025. Google it.”

The focus on Project 2025 reflects a wider effort by Mr. Biden’s campaign and its Democratic allies to convince voters that Mr. Trump’s policies on abortion and the economy, as well as his disregard for democratic norms, matter more than worries about the president’s stamina and mental fitness. They argue that, after two weeks of party infighting, it is time to accept his decision and unite behind him to defeat Mr. Trump.

At the Detroit event, the members of the crowd positioned behind Mr. Biden, and in view of the television cameras, were overwhelmingly Black, while the rest of the crowd was heavily white. As his political standing in Washington has teetered, his strongest statements of support have come from members of the Congressional Black Caucus. On Friday night in Detroit, he spoke of participating in the civil rights movement as a young man.

Mr. Biden seems to be aware of the challenge he faces with a wide range of voters. Before the rally, he stopped at a Detroit bar and grill to meet supporters. At one point, he tried to reassure them.

“I promise you I am OK,” he said.

Inside the high school gymnasium, the mood was buoyant even though Mr. Biden began his remarks more than an hour behind schedule. A crowd of roughly 2,000 people cheered and chanted “Four more years” — with the encouragement of clapping campaign aides.

But even some Democrats at the event said they believed he should leave the race, although they expressed admiration for his long career of public service.

Milan Seth, 58, said Mr. Biden’s appearance at the debate had alarmed him.

“The look in his eye and his gait and his manner reminded me of my mother when she was suffering from dementia,” said Mr. Seth, who lives in Ann Arbor. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Still, Mr. Seth said, he would choose Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump if the president stayed in the race. The Biden campaign is betting it can persuade Democrats and independents to support him because of fears about Mr. Trump.

The Friday visit to Renaissance High School in Detroit was not Mr. Biden’s first.

Four years ago, at a very different moment in his political career, he appeared there alongside Ms. Whitmer; Kamala Harris, his future vice president; and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, and seemed to promise that he would be a transitional leader for the Democrats.

“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Mr. Biden said in March 2020. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”