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Over the weekend President Biden made three sets of remarks on the attempted assassination of President Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday. First he interrupted his customary weekend vacation at Rehoboth Beach to speak briefly on Saturday evening (White House transcript here). On Sunday afternoon he spoke briefly from the Roosevelt Room (White House transcript here and on Sunday evening he spoke from the Oval Office (White House transcript here, video below).

The White House has not posted the text of Biden’s speech in Detroit this past Friday. It is available on video here (C-SPAN) and here (YouTube via a local Fox channel). In that speech Biden reiterated and condensed his case against Trump — that he is a convicted felon, a rapist, an authoritarian, and an existential threat to Our Democracy™. We’ve all heard it many times.

Biden gave a foretaste of that speech before a union audience this past May in Detroit (White House transcript here), but as of Friday he had turned up the volume of his critique to 11 like the band in Spinal Tap.

In that speech he contended that “the threat that Trump poses is greater in a second term than the first.” You know the thing: “This time, he’s telling people — he’s being more honest — he said, ‘I’ll be a dictator on day one.’” He bluntly alleged: “Folks, what is at risk in 2024 are our freedoms, our very democracy. And that’s not hyperbole. That’s why I need you.”

He trotted out a favorite lie: “Donald Trump has said, if he loses again in November, there will be, quote, “bloodshed” [“bloodbath”]. What in God’s name are we talking about here? This is the United States of America.” His take on Trump’s threat to the Supreme Court should at least be noted: “Let me ask you: If he’s reelected, who do you think he’ll put on the Supreme Court? You think he’ll put anybody who has a brain?”

Biden also condemned political violence in that May speech, but only to promote the theme that Trump foments it. The attempted assassination of President Trump tends to undermine that particular theme.

The Washington Free Beacon has compiled Biden’s recent remarks along these lines in the extremely useful story “‘A Threat’: Biden, Democrats Spread Alarmist Rhetoric About Trump In Weeks Before Assassination Attempt.” Representative of them is Biden’s statement to donors last week: “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

Over the weekend Biden reset the table. He has seized on events to freeze the movement of his internal party opponents to displace him at the last minute as the Democrats’ candidate.

Biden now unintentionally indicts his own mode of speaking against Trump: “The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down. We all have a responsibility to do that. It’s time to cool it down…”

If Biden doesn’t turn it down, Americans might infer that assassination is the logical terminus of his campaign against Trump. Indeed, Thomas Matthew Crooks may have drawn this inference. If Trump is a fascist, it’s only right.

For the moment, however, it serves Biden to step back and limit the case against Trump to the traditional demagogic attacks on Republicans. It is the thread of a critique that Biden has already reshaped and deployed against Trump in his campaign speeches.

Biden asserts that he’ll “continue to speak out strongly for our democracy, stand up for our Constitution and the rule of law, to call for action at the ballot box, no violence on our streets. That’s how democracy should work.”

If only. The contest between Biden and Trump should be decided at the (traditional) ballot box. It’s time for Biden to give up the lawfare campaign to take Trump out, Third World style.

Biden made no mention of it in any of his remarks over the weekend, yet he on it heavily in his remarks in Detroit this past Friday. It’s time to call it off. The lawfare campaign — that’s not how democracy should work. We can nevertheless infer from his silence that Biden’s not giving it up.