President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, greet a World War II veteran during ceremonies to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Thursday, June 6, 2024, in Normandy. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The contrast between President Joe Biden and convicted felon Donald Trump couldn’t have been more obvious on Sunday. Trump ranted about sharks and electric boats at an outdoor rally in 100-degreee heat in Nevada. Biden visited the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, France on Sunday to honor the more than 2,200 U.S. soldiers buried there who fought and died in World War I.
It marked the final stop on a five-day visit to France in which Biden marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the allied invasion of the Normandy beaches in World War II.
On MSNBC”s “Morning Joe” Monday, co-host Mika Brzezinski called Trump “sick” and “depraved” following his Nevada speech, saying his speech demonstrated that Trump was “completely unfit to deal with the challenges as leader of the free world.” She said Trump’s remarks were “just disturbing and kind of crazy talk” from a guy “who did not know what to say when his prompter failed.” (Remember how Trump used to mock President Barack Obama for his use of a teleprompter, telling a 2016 campaign rally: “I’m not one of those teleprompter guys.”
And Brzezinski drew a sharp distinction between Trump and Biden ahead of their likely 2024 election showdown.
There is “one on the right who promises to be a dictator, who promises to exact retribution on anybody who made him angry or held him accountable,” she pointed out. And then there is “one on the left who, again, you may not agree with his policies and his legislation, even though he has accomplished more than most modern, if not all modern, American presidents” who “endorses democracy, agrees with democracy” and “wants to preserve our democracy.”
“There is the choice. We’ve heard it a million times,” she said. “And I have to say it because a lot of people are influenced by what they watch on Fox News.”
It was the same cemetery that Trump skipped visiting during a 2018 visit to France. In a 2020 article, The Atlantic wrote:
Historian Jon Meacham said the contrast was even more striking when you contrasted Trump’s remarks with Biden’s speeches marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
"It's very clear, I mean, there's not a lot of mystery here," said Meacham. "We have a president who is trying to maintain and strengthen a post-World War II order that, for all of its imperfections, has prevailed in a largely peaceable way since those men took the beaches at Normandy and went to Berlin, prevailed in the Pacific. President [Harry S.] Truman, in a surprising turn, most people didn't know who he was when he became president in April of 1945, grows in the job in a remarkable way, establishes NATO, establishes the Marshall Plan."
Now there have been several diaries on Daily Kos about Trump’s Las Vegas rally. But I haven’t seen any on what our president and candidate was doing on Sunday.
At the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, Biden placed a wreath at the chapel which stands amidst a sea of white crosses. Our president then remarked:
“More Marines were lost here than in any battle until the middle of World War II. The idea that I’d come to Normandy and not make this short trip here to pay tribute. And it’s the same story. Think about it.
"America showed up. America showed up to stop the Germans. America showed up to make sure that they did not prevail. And America shows up when we’re needed just like our allies show up for us.”
He added: “Even though I’ve been here before, it surprise me how much it awakened my sense of why it’s so valuable to have these alliances. Why it’s so critical. That’s the way you stop wars, not start wars.”
Although Biden did not mention Trump by name, his presence sent a strong symbolic message. This was the same cemetery that Trump skipped visiting in November 2018 on the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I.
In a 2020 article, The Atlantic wrote that Trump blamed rain for his last-minute decision to cancel the visit to the cemetery near Paris, saying that the “helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. The story said neither claim was true.
Instead, The Atlantic wrote:
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Trump denied the accusation. But in a 2023 interview John Kelly, a retired Marine general who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff, confirmed in a 2023 CNN interview that Trump made this and other disparaging remarks behind closed doors about U.S. service members.
Biden has seized on Trump’s disparaging remarks about U.S. troops and veterans at campaign events in the U.S.
It’s worth noting that Biden’s eldest son, Beau, served in Iraq in 2008-2009 as a JAG officer with the Delaware Armey National Guard while also holding the post of state Attorney General. He died of brain cancer in 2015, possibly linked to exposure to toxic burn pits at U.S. miliary bases in Iraq.
At fundraiser last Monday in Greenwich, Conn . , Biden said he lost his son “because of being near a burn pit for a year in Iraq..” He then noted that Trump wouldn’t go to the American cemetery in France.
“Why? He (Trump) said they’re `losers’ and `suckers.’ `Losers’ and `suckers.’ Who in the hell does he think he is?
This guy does not deserve to be president, whether or not I was running. Now we have to do our part. We have to do it together.”
And while the president was in France, the Biden campaign dropped this ad cutting footage of dead American soldiers returning home in coffins with Trump’s past disparaging remarks about servicemembers.
Biden was teary-eyed when he met with some of the last surviving D-Day veterans on June 6 in an anniversary ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery which was also attended by French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
And Biden used the occasion to talk about the struggle then and now between democracy and autocracy, emphasizing the necessity of supporting Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion launched by Vladimir Putin.
Everyone should read Biden’s full speech . He said:
We’re living in a time when democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point since the end of the World War Two — since these beaches were stormed in 1944.
Now, we have to ask ourselves: Will we stand against tyranny, against evil, against crushing brutality of the iron fist?
Will we stand for freedom? Will we defend democracy? Will we stand together? (Applause.)
My answer is yes. And it only can be yes. (Applause.) , .
Biden’s visit to France served as a stark reminder that America might not show up to support an ally if Trump wins a second term in November. In February, Trump told a campaign rally that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if it attacked a NATO member that didn’t pay enough for its defense. The remarks came at a time when House Republicans were holding up a vitally needed $61 billion aid package for Ukraine at Trump’s behest.
A day before the D-Day anniversary, a total of 46 House Republicans voted in favor of an amendment by Moscow Marjorie Taylor Greene that would have struck $433 million in NATO funding from the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bill.
“As long as we remain a member of NATO, the United States will continue to function as the military ATM of European countries at the expense of our own citizens, putting our own national security and our economy at risk," Greene said.
The anxiety in European capitals about what might happen if Trump returns to the White House was underscored in an article in The Atlantic by McKay Coppins.
Coppins wrote:
In capitals across the continent—from Brussels to Berlin, Warsaw to Tallinn—leaders and diplomats expressed a sense of alarm bordering on panic at the prospect of Donald Trump’s reelection.
“We’re in a very precarious place,” one senior NATO official told me. He wasn’t supposed to talk about such things on the record, but it was hardly a secret. The largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II was grinding into its third year. The Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed, and Russia was gaining momentum. Sixty billion dollars in desperately needed military aid for Ukraine had been stalled for months in the dysfunctional U.S. Congress. And, perhaps most ominous, America—the country with by far the biggest military in NATO—appeared on the verge of reelecting a president who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the alliance.
As the November election approaches, Biden’s message could resonate with some Reagan Republican, traditional conservatives who are alarmed that Trump’s isolationist America First agenda poses a threat to democracy and national security. Such concerns might trump the usual disputes over taxes and government spending.
On Friday, Biden spoke at Pointe du Hoc , where Army Rangers scaled a steep 100-foot cliff to take out several long-range German guns that posed a major threat to Allied troops landing on nearby Normandy beaches.
Speaking from a concrete bunker, Biden said those Rangers — none of whom are still alive — would want modern-day Americans to do their part in the struggle against autocrats, CNN reported .
“They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs,” Biden said. “But they’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for. They’re not asking us to give or risk our lives. But they are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves.”
“They’re asking us to do our job, to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy, to stand up to aggression abroad and at home to be part of something bigger than ourselves,” he went on.
Writing in The Bulwark, conservative William Kristol, a Never Trumper, pointed out that Pointe du Hoc was also the site of one of President Ronald Reagan’s memorable speeches on the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984 about the Cold War struggles between the West and the Soviet Union.
Kristol recalled that Reagan made a moving and famous tribute to the “boys of Pointe du Hoc,” dozens of whom attended the ceremony 40 years ago. Reagan said: “These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”
But then Kristol quoted the latter part of Reagan’s speech which dealt with the lessons we should learn from World War II:
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent . . .
But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it . . .
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for.
In an analysis published Saturday, Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz wrote:
In the turbulence of current-day politics, Biden’s internationalism has far more in common with Reagan and the Republican Party of 40 years ago than with Trump’s “America First” doctrine that questions alliances, bends toward authoritarian leaders and points to an American retreat from leadership in the world. The Biden-Reagan connection has obvious limits, but for a moment at least, the current president could find common ground with someone whose politics he opposed when he was in the Senate and Reagan was in the White House.
And Kristol reminded readers of what’s at stake in the 2024 election and why Reagan Republicans should support Biden.
“We now need to confront the fact that this once happily rejected tradition—a toxic brew of isolationism, nativism, and know-nothingism—has come back to life with a vengeance.
“In 1944 and 1984, the presidential candidates of both political parties—the bulk of both parties—were broadly committed to America’s global task and responsibility.
“Not so in 2024.
“As a result, while the challenges we face abroad are far less challenging than those we confronted in 1944, or even in 1984, the challenge we face here at home in 2024 is greater.
“President Biden spoke eloquently today in Normandy. But what matters most is what we, the American people, do this year, and in the years ahead.”
