Joe Biden's State of the Union address shows he's the champion of democracy the world needs – Scotsman comment

US President’s occasional lapses pale into comparison with the many flaws of Donald Trump

If Joe Biden’s aides were nervous about his State of the Union address, they shouldn’t have been. The 81-year-old president, whose memory lapses have prompted concern about his mental acuity, gave a combative speech about the need to defend democracy in the face of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert it in the US.

He referred to 1941 address by President Franklin Roosevelt, which sought to “wake up” the American people to the dangers posed by Hitler’s war in Europe. Biden said he hoped to do the same: “... freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time... If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not… my predecessor [Trump] tells Putin, ‘do whatever the hell you want.’”

Biden does make occasional mistakes, but so does Trump. Hopefully, when Americans come to vote, those factors will cancel each other out. For the world needs a champion of democracy, even if a flawed one, in the White House and not an enemy.

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