POINTE DU HOC, France (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday summoned Americans to defend democracy from threats at home and abroad — and cast an implicit contrast with Donald Trump — as he drew on the heroism of Army Rangers who scaled the seaside cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in the D-Day invasion 80 years ago.
President Joe Biden delivers a speech on the legacy of Pointe du Hoc, and democracy around the world, Friday, June 7, 2024 as he stands next to the Pointe du Hoc monument in Normandy, France. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The same spot was etched in the nation's political memory in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan honored the “boys of Pointe du Hoc” and drew common cause between their almost unthinkable feat in the face of Nazi Germany's tyranny and the Reagan-era Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union.
Now, Biden sought to channel both historic moments to advance his own vision for the country’s global role in the face of two grueling wars and in an election year when former President Trump has continued to lie about his 2020 election loss and has threatened to dismantle U.S. commitments overseas if he regains the White House.
“As we gather here today, it’s not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery that day June 6, 1944,” Biden said. “It’s to listen to the echo of their voices. To hear them. Because they are summoning us. They’re asking us what will we do. They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs. They’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for.”
It was ostensibly an official speech, and Biden, a Democrat, never referenced the Republican former president's name. But his remarks were steeped in political overtones as his campaign tries to attract national security-minded Republican voters who lionized Reagan and have never warmed to Trump's “America First” foreign policy.
“They’re not asking us to do their job,” Biden said of the “ghosts of Pointe du Hoc." "They’re asking us to do our job: to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy, to stand up aggression abroad and at home, to be part of something bigger than ourselves.”
A day earlier, Biden paid his respects to the D-Day force in an emotional ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery that was also attended by dozens of veterans in their late 90s and older. A Navy officer recited “The Watch,” affirming that a new generation was taking up the defense of freedom; a 21-gun salute cast eerie smoke over 9,388 white marble headstones; and the president grew heavy-eyed and pumped his fist as an F-35 flew past performing a missing-man salute.
Biden, at 81 not that many years removed from the Normandy fighters, cast himself — and his nation — as their inheritors in the timeless struggle between freedom and tyranny, saying “we're the fortunate heirs of a legacy of these heroes.”
But the country’s willingness to take up the mantle has in many ways never been more uncertain as Trump seeks to return to the White House. Biden seemed to give a nod to that as he invoked the heroes of old and asked, “Does anyone doubt they would move heaven and earth to vanquish hateful ideologies of today?”
Before flying to Normandy, Biden sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday in Paris, where he stressed the U.S. commitment to Ukraine in the face of Russia's invasion and for the first time publicly apologized to the Ukrainian people for a monthslong congressional holdup in American military assistance that let Moscow make battlefield gains. It was their first meeting since Biden signed the legislation authorizing the additional military assistance. He also announced a new $225 million in ammunition shipments, including rockets, mortars, artillery rounds and air-defense missiles.
“I apologize for those weeks of not knowing what’s going to happen in terms of funding,” Biden said, but insisted that the American people were standing by Ukraine for the long haul. “We’re still in. Completely. Thoroughly,” he said.
As he works to shore up Ukraine, Biden is grappling with other global challenges, among them seeking to end fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza while also trying to reorient U.S. foreign policy to confront China’s rising power in Asia.
Pointe du Hoc is located on the sheer cliffs between Omaha and Utah beaches. Before D-Day, the Nazis were believed to have stationed artillery there, which would have allowed them to shell critical landing zones for Allied troops.
Army Rangers used ropes, ladders and their hands to scale Pointe du Hoc while under fire. When they reached the top, they realized that the artillery had already been moved elsewhere and only decoys remained. The weapons were tracked down nearby and disabled, and the Americans spent two days repelling Nazi counterattacks.
The mission was memorialized by Reagan on the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984.
“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc," he said. "These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”
Reagan's speech, coming as the Cold War with the Soviet Union remained underway, was also a call for the U.S. to not turn its back on Europe.
“We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars," he said. "It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”
It's a view that would likely put him out of step with the modern Republican Party, which under Trump's leadership has become increasingly skeptical of foreign entanglements.
Biden highlighted the contrast during his State of the Union this year.
“It wasn’t that long ago when a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, thundered, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,'” a reference to another famous speech in Berlin. “Now, my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’”
Trump made that comment at a February rally in South Carolina, warning European allies not to be “delinquent” in their military spending or he would refuse to help them as president.