Biden campaign tries to use Trump’s second-term blueprint against him as debate looms

With just hours to go until President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump meet for their first debate in four years, Biden’s campaign is looking to use the massive amounts of attention being lavished on the rhetorical prizefight to remind voters of Trumpworld’s plan to reshape government in the felonious ex-president’s image should he be returned to the White House next year.

The Biden campaign is rolling out a seven-figure paid digital and print-media campaign, which includes homepage takeovers at Buzzfeed, USA Today, CNN, El Tiempo Latino, Telemundo, theGrio, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution to highlight what they describe as “the dangers of electing Trump to a second term.”

The president’s campaign is also launching a new website that takes aim at Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump term that has been put forth by the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank.

As The Independent has reported, the plan would allow Trump to carry out a blitzkrieg of firings across federal agencies, potentially allowing an army of loyalists to weaponize the government against his rivals. It also includes executive actions to effectively ban abortion nationwide and threaten access to birth control under a centuries-old law called the Comstock Act, restrict press freedoms, deploy troops in Democratic-run cities and crush civil rights protests with violence.

Sarafina Chitika, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that Project 2024 “spells out” how Trump would “do everything he can to rip away Americans’ freedoms, undermine our democracy, and amass power for himself while weaponizing the government to get revenge on his opponents” in a second term.

At the same time, Biden campaign aides and confidantes to the president who’ve been privy to his debate preparations say he is going to come out swinging against Trump by highlighting his status as a felon and reminding Americans of the violent attack on the Capitol nearly four years ago.

A source tells The Independent that Biden will take pains to frame the attack as a paradigm-shifting event along the lines of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and will reference this election being the first one since the Capitol attack.

He is also understood to have plans to highlight the Capitol attack and Trump’s felony conviction as just two examples of how the ex-president’s motivations for seeking to reclaim his former office are entirely selfish and not rooted in any desire to help Americans.

Biden campaign senior spokesperson Kevin Munoz said the advertising “show of force” both in Atlanta and across battleground states would serve to emphasize “the two contrasting visions the American people will see on the debate stage tonight.”

The president, he said, is “fighting for the American people,” while Trump’s campaign “is focused on benefitting one person only: himself.”