In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump calls on the audience to “complete the job” by sending him back to the White House so he can “reclaim our democracy”.

^{April 2023}

Biden launches his re-election campaign with a video that frames his bid around freedom, equality and democracy. It includes imagery from the insurrection and calls out “Maga extremists”.

A few days later, Trump speaks to a crowd at a rally in New Hampshire and references the launch video: “He states he’s running because Trump and Maga pose a threat to democracy. Can you believe it? Maga is Make America Great Again, right? No threat there. No.

“It’s Biden who poses the threat to democracy because he is grossly incompetent, has no idea what he’s doing, and basically he doesn’t have a clue and that’s a very bad position to put our country in. Our country’s in a very dangerous position right now.”

^{June 2023}

The US justice department charges Trump with 37 felonies related to keeping classified documents after he left the White House (more charges are later added). At an arraignment in Miami on 13 June, Trump pleads not guilty.

That night, he rails against the charges and Biden, outside Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.

“This day will go down in infamy,” Trump says. “And Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy. But they will fail and we will win bigger and better than ever before.”

^{August 2023}

The special counsel Jack Smith spends much of 2023 working on an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in a grand jury indicting Trump on 1 August 2023.

At an Alabama Republican dinner on 4 August, Trump calls the indictment a “sham” with “fake charges”.

“We’re not the ones trying to undermine American democracy,” Trump says. “We are the ones fighting to save our democracy. We’re fighting to save our democracy. This ridiculous indictment against us, it’s not a legal case. It’s an act of desperation by a failed and disgraced crooked Joe Biden and his radical-left thugs to preserve their grip on power.”

Elsewhere, in Fulton county, Georgia, a grand jury hands up an indictment of Trump on 14 August in another election subversion case, centered on the swing state in 2020. The sprawling case includes Trump and many of his allies and involves state racketeering and conspiracy charges.

After his booking in Fulton county, Trump brings up his common line that the charges are “election interference” but doesn’t mention Biden by name – the case is not brought by the US justice department, but by the local prosecutor Fani Willis.

“What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election. There’s never been anything like it in our country before,” he says. “This is their way of campaigning, and this is one instance, but you have three other instances. It’s election interference.”

^{September 2023}

Biden makes remarks a couple times that call out Trump as a threat to democracy and pins his re-election campaign on preserving US democracy, just as his 2020 election was.

“Let there be no question: Donald Trump and his Maga Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Biden says at a New York fundraiser. “And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy.”

In an Arizona speech framed around democracy issues later that month, Biden calls out the Maga agenda but doesn’t mention Trump by name much. He doesn’t mention the charges against Trump, which come in part from Biden’s justice department.

“This Maga threat is a threat to the brick and mortar of our democratic institutions,” Biden says in Arizona.

In response to the speech, Trump’s campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung gives NBC News a now familiar response: “The radical-left Democrats, now led by crooked Joe Biden, are the greatest threat to democracy the United States of America has ever faced.”

^{November 2023}

In Colorado, a trial is under way that seeks to boot Trump from the ballot there, citing the 14th amendment as its basis. The amendment’s third clause disqualifies Trump from holding the White House again, the filers argue, because he engaged in insurrection while he was an officer of the US. The case will eventually end up in the US supreme court, after Colorado becomes the first state to decide Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot, based on the amendment.

In a speech in Iowa on 18 November, Trump brings up the cases now in several states that seek to keep him from returning to high office, calling them an “election-rigging ballot-qualification scam”.

“Our opponents are showing every day that they hate democracy,” he says. “They’re trying every illegal move they can to try and steal this election because they know that in a free and fair fight against President Trump and crooked Joe Biden, Biden doesn’t have a shot. He’s going to be going down into his basement again. He’s going to be hiding.”

^{December 2023}

On the campaign trail throughout the US, Trump keeps bringing up the democracy argument, solidifying its place in this election’s stump speech for the former president.

The third anniversary of 6 January is on the horizon, a date that Biden is expected to use to drive home his points that his re-election protects democracy from the threat posed by Trump and his followers.

In Iowa on 2 December, Trump says: “Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy. Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”

His speech to the New York Young Republicans on 9 December is perhaps his most extensive broadside at Biden over democracy issues yet. He’s not a threat to democracy, he says – he will “save democracy”. Biden is the threat, and the claims that Trump is the threat are a “hoax”. The media is part of the hoax, too, and is using it to deflect from the left’s “monstrous abuses of power”.

“We call it now the threat-to-democracy hoax because that’s what it is. These guys are so good with misinformation, disinformation, it’s a slight difference,” Trump says.

The lines Trump uses to attack Biden on democracy issues come out with a bit more clarity after a few months of him using them here and there while campaigning: “Biden is the real threat to democracy for two simple reasons. He’s corrupt, and he’s incompetent, grossly competent. But we have to fight Democrat misinformation at every corner if the Republican party is to survive.”

Back on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, on 16 December: “We’re engaged in a righteous crusade to liberate this nation from a corrupt political class that is waging war on American democracy like never before.”

On 17 December, in Nevada: “Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. They’re weaponizing law enforcement for high-level election interference because we’re beating them so badly in the polls.”

In the Nevada speech, Trump brings up one of the terms he has effectively turned on its head, depriving it of its previous meaning: fake news. It used to refer to stories published by sham outlets that were patently fake, but for years now, Trump has been using it to refer to media he doesn’t like. “We have some great journalists and reporters, but mostly, for the most part, they’re corrupt and fake. Hence the term fake news. That was a good one. We have a lot of good ones,” he says.

On 19 December, the Colorado supreme court rules that Trump is disqualified from the ballot because of the 14th amendment.

In an Iowa speech that same day, Trump again calls Biden a threat to democracy.

“It’s no wonder crooked Joe Biden and the far-left lunatics are desperate to stop us by any means necessary,” he says. “They’re willing to violate the US constitution at levels never seen before in order to win this election. Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. It’s a threat.”

^{January 2024}

On the eve of the insurrection’s anniversary, Biden delivers a speech going deep on democracy issues, saying a “determined minority” is doing all it can to “destroy our democracy”. Trump won’t condemn political violence, Biden says. He pledges that democracy is our “sacred cause” that he will protect.

“This is the first national election since [the] January 6 insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy,” Biden says.

In a response to Fox News Digital after the speech, Trump uses his practiced line: “Because of his gross incompetence, Joe Biden is a true threat to democracy.”

In the weeks following the 6 January anniversary, Trump keeps up his rhetoric about democracy.

Back on the campaign trail, Trump tells supporters at an Iowa rally that a vote for him is a vote to “reclaim our democracy from crooked Joe Biden and the entire criminal class in our nation’s capital”.

“It’s never happened, the weaponization of justice like they’re doing right now,” Trump says. “The DoJ is very corrupt. What they’re doing is very corrupt. People aren’t going to take it. Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s weaponizing law enforcement for a high-level election interference.”

After a court hearing about his claim of presidential immunity from prosecution, he says that the justice department’s cases against him, playing out now during an election year where he’s a candidate, are the “real threat to democracy”.

At a New Hampshire rally again later that month, he says the prosecutions of his actions are more akin to what happens in “banana republics, third-world countries”.

“Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. That’s what it is. He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump tells the crowd. “What he’s doing there is so bad, it’s a Pandora’s box. It can happen the other way. And when it happens the other way, it’s going to be a terrible thing, too. And that’s not a threat. That’s just the way life is. That’s the way life works. It doesn’t have to be me. It could be anybody else.”

He closes out the month in Las Vegas, reciting his stump speech about Biden being a threat to democracy because he’s both incompetent and also interfering with Trump’s re-election.

“Incompetence is a gross threat to democracy,” Trump says.

^{March 2024}

At a 2 March rally in Richmond, Virginia, days before Biden’s planned State of the Union address, Trump brings up the democracy line again, saying he’s no threat.

“Joe Biden and his fascists that control him are the real threat to democracy in this country,” Trump says. “They are a big threat, and they are corrupt. They are a big threat. He is the one. They have the standard line: ‘Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.’ Some advertising agency wrote that down. I’m not a threat. I’m the one that’s ending the threat to democracy.”

Biden issues his State of the Union address on 7 March, an energetic defense of Democratic values, where he never uses Trump’s name, instead referring to him as Biden’s “predecessor”.

As expected, democracy is a cornerstone of the speech: Biden notes how democracy is under threat both in the US and around the world.

“January 6 and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the civil war,” he says. “But they failed. America stood strong and democracy prevailed. But we must be honest, the threat remains and democracy must be defended.”

Trump and his allies in Congress “seek to bury the truth about January 6”, the president says. But the moment calls for speaking the truth.

“And here’s the simplest truth: you can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden says. “As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy.”

On 9 March, both Biden and Trump hold rallies in Georgia. There, Trump responds to the State of the Union, calling it an “angry, dark, hate-filled rant” that wouldn’t bring the country together.

“I’m going to bring it together,” Trump says. “He’s a threat to democracy. I will tell you, he’s a threat to democracy. Weaponize government. Weaponize the FBI. Weaponize the DoJ. He’s a threat to democracy for other reasons also. No 1, he’s grossly incompetent.”

In a 16 March speech in Ohio, Trump derides the court cases he faces and again calls the January 6 rioters “patriots” and “hostages”.

He warns that there will be a “bloodbath” if he loses the race, though his campaign later claims Trump was talking about the effects on the auto industry and the economy. Biden’s campaign says the comment was another sign of Trump’s threats of political violence, saying :“He wants another January 6.”

In the speech, Trump starkly lays out what he thinks will happen if he loses the election: US democracy will end.

“I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he says.

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