(CNN)President Joe Biden gave impassioned notice Tuesday he intends to make what he bills the far-right extremism and lawlessness of Donald Trump's "MAGA Republicans" the key issue in his bid to save Democrats in November's midterm elections.
Biden found his voice in one of his most robust political speeches yet as president, days after condemning GOP "semi-fascism," as part of a three-stop blitz in the coming week in Pennsylvania -- a battleground that could decide the Senate's destiny in November.
"You can't be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection," Biden said in remarks specifically calling out Republicans on Tuesday. "You can't be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on January 6 patriots. You can't do it."
He also implicitly rebuked Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who had warned of street riots if the former President is indicted after an FBI search of his Florida resort after taking classified documents when he left the White House.
"The idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, 'If such and such happens, there'll be blood in the street'? Where the hell are we?" Biden said, ignoring Graham's later statement that he abhorred violence.
The President escalated his attacks after Trump unleashed a torrent of invective and reposts of conspiracy-laden material on his social media site, which, if anything tended to bolster Biden's point. His posts were reminiscent of rhetoric interpreted by extremists as a call to arms ahead of the US Capitol insurrection. In one post Trump elevated on his social media network, a commenter wrote, "We cant (sic) let the FBI break the American spirit."
Since the search for classified material at Mar-a-Lago, conducted on the base of a legal warrant, the bureau has reported rising threats against its premises and its agents. Biden made the fierce backlash against the bureau the centerpiece of an attempt to wrest control of an issue that Republicans have typically weaponized: law and order.
"There's no place in this country, no place, for endangering the lives of law enforcement. No place. None, never, period. I'm opposed to defunding the police. I'm also opposed to defunding the FBI," Biden said. In recent weeks some of Trump's most vehement acolytes have said the bureau's funding should be cut off.
Biden's new offensive, which he will reinforce in a prime-time address Thursday outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, represents one of the most significant twists of the midterm campaign yet.