Four years ago in accepting the Democratic nomination, I said: "Give me your help not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people."
In 2020 the issue was the restoration of the soul of America. As the inaugural address was being delivered MAGA Extremists were in the city seeking to destroy the Constitution that I was sworn to "support, protect and defend."
They hate me; they hate you; and they hate America.
They are violent bullies, cowards and criminals. It is not democracy that they want but mobocracy. MAGA Extremists attack the integrity and honor of American Government itself. They are already aliens to the spirit of American democracy. Let them emigrate and try their lot under some foreign flag in which they have more confidence.
Today, over 1,000 MAGA Extremists are convicted criminals. Hundreds more await indictment or trial or both. Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until every one of them is behind bars as was said three
thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'
In 2024 the issue is the preservation of America's soul.
Here is an amazing paradox! The very politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of racial and class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system with their vile propaganda. ...But this propaganda is worse—it is deceit. It is not democracy that this propaganda sustains but oligarchy.
The MAGA corporate propaganda machine hates me.
It hates you.
It hates America.
Donald Trump considered the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to his own affairs. It is not the Constitution that he raises his right hand to “support, protect, and defend” but the Trump Organization.
Trump hates me.
Trump hates you.
Trump hates America.
MAGA Extremists use the Christian Cross as a weapon against others rather than as a shield. It is not a democracy that they want but a theocracy. It is my deep conviction that democracy cannot live without that true religion which gives a nation a sense of justice and of moral purpose. Above our political forums, above our market places stand the altars of our faith-altars on which burn the fires of devotion that maintain all that is best in us and all that is best in our Nation.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.
Here and now I want to make myself clear about those who disparage their fellow citizens and those "huddled masses" who come here "yearning to breathe free." They say that immigrants make our country "dirtier", that they are not merely jobless—that they are worthless. Their solution is to build a Wall to keep them out, and to harass and even murder, those who come here.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of nativism, of racism and of fascism have met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
For these things, too, and for a multitude of others like them, we have only just begun to fight.
sources: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-madison-square-garden-new-york-city-1, https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-tonight.html
