Former President Joe Biden on Thursday accused President Donald Trump and his administration of trying to “dismantle the constitution.”
At the National Bar Association’s 100th Annual Awards Gala, Biden said the Trump White House “is doing its best” to go after the nation’s core principles and that “they’ve been doing it all too often with the help of a Congress that’s just sitting on the sidelines and enabled by the highest court in the nation.”
The speech echoed the “Soul of the Nation” theme in Biden’s 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns.
“In the life of our nation there are moments so stark that they divide all that came before from everything that follows. Moments that force us to confront hard truths about ourselves, our institutions and democracy itself,” Biden said in his July 31 speech. “We are, in my view, at such a moment in American history.”
The former president also swiped at law firms that have made deals with the Trump administration, saying they were “bending to bullies.”
Biden, who accepted the association’s C. Francis Stradford Award, called on lawyers in the room to defend the rule of law.
“It means take the client that can’t write the big check but needs protecting of basic fundamental rights. It means sign on to that brief that may draw the ire of people in power, but you know its the right thing to do,” Biden said.
Biden, Obama contrast on Trump responses
Biden’s remarks came just over a week after former President Barack Obama issued a statement in response to Trump’s accusations of treason and the posting of an AI generated video of the 44th President being arrested.
The statement, attributed to a spokesperson, called Trump’s comments a “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction” from the ongoing controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s handling of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal files.
Trump has had his own share of criticism for Biden, both recent and in the past. In April, Trump blamed his predecessor for a poor economy, saying “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” adding that “we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’” He’s also ordered an investigation of Biden’s alleged “cognitive decline.”
At a 2022 rally in Arizona, Trump said “Biden has utterly humiliated our nation.”
In the rare post-presidency public appearance Thursday evening, Biden said that “the hard truth” of the Trump administration was that it aimed “to erase fairness, equality, to erase justice itself.”
Biden’s remarks echoed his first post-presidency speech in April, when he accused Trump of “taking a hatchet” to the Social Security Administration.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden says Trump is trying to ‘dismantle the Constitution’
