The Road to Atlanta

Dear DNC Member,

Please see below for a memo from the Biden-Harris campaign about their actions ahead of the Presidential Debate in Atlanta, Georgia on June 27.

Yours,

Jason
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Jason Rae (he/him/his)

Secretary

Democratic National Committee

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To: Interested Parties
From: Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Chair
Subject: The Road to Atlanta
Date: May 24, 2024

When Donald Trump was president, he made it his personal mission to try and rip health care away from millions of Americans. He gifted tax breaks to billionaires on the backs of the middle class. He lost more American jobs than any president in nearly a century. He called the heroes who gave their lives for our country “suckers” and “losers.” And when the country needed leadership amid a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, he tear gassed citizens and encouraged Americans to inject themselves with bleach to ward off COVID, while hundreds of thousands of Americans died as he mismanaged the pandemic.

But that was just the beginning.

When Trump lost the 2020 election, he snapped.

He tried desperately to cling to power, and encouraged a violent assault on our nation’s Capitol, cheering on a mob that threatened to hang his own vice president. He calls those January 6 insurrectionists “patriots.” He takes credit any chance he gets for overturning Roe v. Wade and ripping away the freedom for women to make their own health care decisions – and he would go even further in a second term, supporting punishing women and banning abortion nationwide. He constantly echoes the words of dictators and invokes the language of Nazi Germany – embracing political violence on the stump, warning of a “bloodbath” if he loses again, and pledging to rule as a dictator on “day one.”

This is the Trump agenda in 2024. And on June 27, it will be on full display in primetime for the American people to see in 4K. Joe Biden will hold Donald Trump accountable for all of it on the debate stage – and he’s raring to go.

This road to the Atlanta debate begins in earnest today with “Snapped,” the campaign’s newest ad, which features two-time Academy Award-winning actor Robert De Niro. Airing on national TV, in local markets, and digitally across every battleground state, the ad highlights how Trump’s unhinged pursuit of revenge and retribution has only grown since he lost the 2020 election. While he was out of control as president, he is running to go further: threatening to be a dictator, calling to terminate the Constitution, and warning of a “bloodbath” if he loses.

As President Biden said last week when he challenged Donald Trump to debate, the President has a list of things he’d like to talk to Trump about:

How Trump was the architect of the repeal of Roe – and wants to go even further in a second term;
How Trump attacks our democracy, continues to embrace political violence, and spreads conspiracies about the election he lost, and plans to punish his enemies, silence his opponents, and incite more chaos, division, and violence if he regains power;
And how his economic plans, from his billionaire tax giveaways to his plans to gut Social Security and Medicare, would make him and his friends richer and jack up costs for the middle class – the same fraudulent and self-centered approach he’s taken his entire life.

In the month leading up to that first debate, the Biden-Harris campaign will zero in on Trump’s dangerous campaign promises and unhinged rhetoric. We will make sure that the voters who will decide this election are reminded of the chaos and harm Trump caused as president – and why they booted him out four years ago. Trump and his lagging campaign will be left to explain to voters why he embraces political violence, brags about abortion bans, threatens to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Social Security and Medicare, and puts greedy corporations and himself over American workers again and again.

Team Biden-Harris will drive these key themes across the entire campaign in the lead-up to the debate, including through new paid media efforts, earned media opportunities, and on the ground organizing and battleground events to bring the stakes of this election to every voter who will decide it.

The campaign will organize around key moments, including:

The anniversary of the Dobbs decision, which took reproductive freedoms away from millions of women, which Trump says he's "proud" to have done.
The anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, where a weapon of war was used to murder 49 people – a tragedy to any normal person, but to Trump just something we should all just “get over”

And while we focus on these key issues in the run-up to Atlanta, Team Biden-Harris will also continue to bolster its outreach and organizing programs around other mobilizing issues with the communities that will decide this election.

All the while, we should expect Team Trump to do what it does best: nothing. Their bare-bones campaign would take a few Truth Social rants with a MAGA rally sprinkled in over having their candidate out there talking about the issues that Americans care most about. Because when Trump’s abortion-banning, billionaire-shilling, election-denying agenda is on the ballot, it’s a loser. Just like him

As we head into the summer, the choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump – between a leader who fights for everyday Americans and a chaos agent waging a self-obsessed campaign of revenge and retribution – is continuing to crystallize for voters. And the stakes are painfully clear: Our fundamental rights and freedoms, our economic opportunities, and our health care are all on the line.

While the stakes of this election are clear, so is the case for Joe Biden. He is prepared to bring that case to the American people in Atlanta on June 27. Donald Trump said he would debate any time, anywhere, any place – and now he can hear it for himself. If he shows up.

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Paid for by Biden for President