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On the cusp of the election year, Donald Trump made a decision: knowing Joe Biden would structure his campaign around the threat Trump poses to US democracy, Trump would use the same line back at Biden.

It was an unlikely bet, given that Trump is facing 88 criminal charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But Trump started laying out that message last summer, sprinkling into his speeches the idea that the US president was “grossly incompetent” and that such incompetence posed a threat to democracy. As charges rolled in against the former president, none of them lodged by Biden himself, he added the claim that Biden was also using his power to shut down his opponent, threatening democracy by engaging in “election interference”.

As 6 January 2024 approached, three years after the insurrection, Trump ramped up his attempt to turn one of his liabilities against his opponent. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump falsely claims to be a savior of democracy and, with increasing harshness, says Biden is the threat.

At a rally in Ohio this month, Trump predicted an end to US democracy if he doesn’t win the race.

“I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he said.

The “threat to democracy” retort was Trump’s latest attempt at rebranding the truth, a practiced part of his effort to create an alternate reality for his disciples. In that mirror world, Trump is both the victim and the strongman, the only person who can drive out an underworld of deep-staters who control the country and have unjustly targeted him because he threatens their supposed dominance. The wealthy businessman casts himself as an everyman, the guy willing to say what others are thinking, no matter how uncouth.

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“Someone on his staff has made it clear that criticisms that he is anti-democratic are hurting his image,” Edward Schiappa, a humanities professor who researches argumentation, media influence and rhetorical theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email. “Rather than fix the image, or otherwise moderate any of his lies, he has resorted to the Pee-wee Herman strategy of: ‘I know you are but what am I?’” (Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

Trump’s previous efforts to shift blame by warping criticisms of himself are legion. Fake news, which once referred to untrue articles online that fooled readers, became a retort to media critical of Trump. Not paying taxes makes him “smart”. Efforts to hold him accountable are “witch-hunts” or a “hoax”. After being called out for racist words and actions, he claimed to be “the least racist person anywhere in the world” – this, despite a track record of dehumanizing language aimed at immigrants. “Believe me,” a man whose political career runs on a stack of falsehoods often tells his audiences.

The seeds of these falsehoods culminated in the biggest lie he has attempted to get his followers, and in turn the American public, to believe: that he won an election he lost. That claim reverberates in all he does on the campaign trail in his attempt to return to the White House.

Trump’s attempt to cast himself as pro-democracy also coincides with more authoritarian language, saying he would be a dictator for a day and vowing to go after his political opponents, whom he called “vermin”. He called those arrested for storming the US Capitol “hostages” rather than acknowledging the crimes they committed.

Jennifer R Mercieca, a professor specializing in political rhetoric at Texas A&M University, said she would have expected Trump to double down on his “dictator for a day” messaging rather than fall into this back-and-forth with Biden over who’s better for democracy.

“It’s very interesting and, in fact, a sign of weakness that Donald Trump is allowing Joe Biden to define this election as democracy versus autocracy,” Mercieca said.

Trump’s consistent base doesn’t need his new line about threats to democracy in order to vote for him; in fact, the far right of the Republican party, Trump’s most ardent followers, favor some degree of authoritarianism. This inclination was on display at CPAC in February, where the far-right activist Jack Posobiec praised the insurrection and called for overthrowing democracy, though he later attempted to walk back the comments as partly satirical.

“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” Posobiec said. “We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”

For that Trump-loving core group, being a Trump supporter is part of their core identity, Schiappa said. When Trump repeats a claim over and over, like that the 2020 election was stolen, it becomes part of that self-identity, making their beliefs and attitudes hard to charge, he said.

It’s an argument technique called “tu quoque”, essentially attacking an opponent’s argument by pointing out a hypocrisy, but it’s more understandable as the kind of language you’d hear in a match of playground finger-pointing, not in a presidential election.

“Through sheer repetition, aided by conservative news media, he has persuaded a group of devoted followers that what he speaks is true,” Schiappa said. “It is similar to how a cult works in the sense that his followers are deeply invested in him – emotionally and for their own sense of identity. This combination leads a minority of Americans, who are sufficiently unmotivated or unable to consider alternative sources, to believe claims that rational adults know are false.”

Beyond that group for whom Trump is a part of their identity, his ability to sway beliefs is weaker. So who is this argument for? Given the democracy message’s lack of needed appeal to his base, it would seem Trump is seeking out a less radical voter by starting to proclaim himself a savior of democracy.

But, Schiappa noted, “outside of self-identified conservatives, no, I do not think Trump’s assertions that Biden represents a threat to democracy has much influence”.

Mercieca said it could be for donors, some of whom eschew Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric.

“I think they don’t want to give money to somebody who says they’re going to end democracy,” she said. “They still probably legitimately recognize that democracy is actually a better environment for business than autocracy.”

A timeline of key moments for Trump’s “threat to democracy”

^{March 2023}

In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump calls on the audience to “complete the job” by sending him back to the White House so he can “reclaim our democracy”.

^{April 2023}

Biden launches his re-election campaign with a video that frames his bid around freedom, equality and democracy. It includes imagery from the insurrection and calls out “Maga extremists”.

A few days later, Trump speaks to a crowd at a rally in New Hampshire and references the launch video: “He states he’s running because Trump and Maga pose a threat to democracy. Can you believe it? Maga is Make America Great Again, right? No threat there. No.

“It’s Biden who poses the threat to democracy because he is grossly incompetent, has no idea what he’s doing, and basically he doesn’t have a clue and that’s a very bad position to put our country in. Our country’s in a very dangerous position right now.”

^{June 2023}

The US justice department charges Trump with 37 felonies related to keeping classified documents after he left the White House (more charges are later added). At an arraignment in Miami on 13 June, Trump pleads not guilty.

That night, he rails against the charges and Biden, outside Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.

“This day will go down in infamy,” Trump says. “And Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy. But they will fail and we will win bigger and better than ever before.”

^{August 2023}

The special counsel Jack Smith spends much of 2023 working on an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in a grand jury indicting Trump on 1 August 2023.

At an Alabama Republican dinner on 4 August, Trump calls the indictment a “sham” with “fake charges”.

“We’re not the ones trying to undermine American democracy,” Trump says. “We are the ones fighting to save our democracy. We’re fighting to save our democracy. This ridiculous indictment against us, it’s not a legal case. It’s an act of desperation by a failed and disgraced crooked Joe Biden and his radical-left thugs to preserve their grip on power.”

Elsewhere, in Fulton county, Georgia, a grand jury hands up an indictment of Trump on 14 August in another election subversion case, centered on the swing state in 2020. The sprawling case includes Trump and many of his allies and involves state racketeering and conspiracy charges.

After his booking in Fulton county, Trump brings up his common line that the charges are “election interference” but doesn’t mention Biden by name – the case is not brought by the US justice department, but by the local prosecutor Fani Willis.

“What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election. There’s never been anything like it in our country before,” he says. “This is their way of campaigning, and this is one instance, but you have three other instances. It’s election interference.”

^{September 2023}

Biden makes remarks a couple times that call out Trump as a threat to democracy and pins his re-election campaign on preserving US democracy, just as his 2020 election was.

“Let there be no question: Donald Trump and his Maga Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Biden says at a New York fundraiser. “And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy.”

In an Arizona speech framed around democracy issues later that month, Biden calls out the Maga agenda but doesn’t mention Trump by name much. He doesn’t mention the charges against Trump, which come in part from Biden’s justice department.

“This Maga threat is a threat to the brick and mortar of our democratic institutions,” Biden says in Arizona.

In response to the speech, Trump’s campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung gives NBC News a now familiar response: “The radical-left Democrats, now led by crooked Joe Biden, are the greatest threat to democracy the United States of America has ever faced.”

^{November 2023}

In Colorado, a trial is under way that seeks to boot Trump from the ballot there, citing the 14th amendment as its basis. The amendment’s third clause disqualifies Trump from holding the White House again, the filers argue, because he engaged in insurrection while he was an officer of the US. The case will eventually end up in the US supreme court, after Colorado becomes the first state to decide Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot, based on the amendment.

In a speech in Iowa on 18 November, Trump brings up the cases now in several states that seek to keep him from returning to high office, calling them an “election-rigging ballot-qualification scam”.

“Our opponents are showing every day that they hate democracy,” he says. “They’re trying every illegal move they can to try and steal this election because they know that in a free and fair fight against President Trump and crooked Joe Biden, Biden doesn’t have a shot. He’s going to be going down into his basement again. He’s going to be hiding.”

^{December 2023}

On the campaign trail throughout the US, Trump keeps bringing up the democracy argument, solidifying its place in this election’s stump speech for the former president.

The third anniversary of 6 January is on the horizon, a date that Biden is expected to use to drive home his points that his re-election protects democracy from the threat posed by Trump and his followers.

In Iowa on 2 December, Trump says: “Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy. Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”

His speech to the New York Young Republicans on 9 December is perhaps his most extensive broadside at Biden over democracy issues yet. He’s not a threat to democracy, he says – he will “save democracy”. Biden is the threat, and the claims that Trump is the threat are a “hoax”. The media is part of the hoax, too, and is using it to deflect from the left’s “monstrous abuses of power”.

“We call it now the threat-to-democracy hoax because that’s what it is. These guys are so good with misinformation, disinformation, it’s a slight difference,” Trump says.

The lines Trump uses to attack Biden on democracy issues come out with a bit more clarity after a few months of him using them here and there while campaigning: “Biden is the real threat to democracy for two simple reasons. He’s corrupt, and he’s incompetent, grossly competent. But we have to fight Democrat misinformation at every corner if the Republican party is to survive.”

Back on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, on 16 December: “We’re engaged in a righteous crusade to liberate this nation from a corrupt political class that is waging war on American democracy like never before.”

On 17 December, in Nevada: “Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. They’re weaponizing law enforcement for high-level election interference because we’re beating them so badly in the polls.”

In the Nevada speech, Trump brings up one of the terms he has effectively turned on its head, depriving it of its previous meaning: fake news. It used to refer to stories published by sham outlets that were patently fake, but for years now, Trump has been using it to refer to media he doesn’t like. “We have some great journalists and reporters, but mostly, for the most part, they’re corrupt and fake. Hence the term fake news. That was a good one. We have a lot of good ones,” he says.

On 19 December, the Colorado supreme court rules that Trump is disqualified from the ballot because of the 14th amendment.

In an Iowa speech that same day, Trump again calls Biden a threat to democracy.

“It’s no wonder crooked Joe Biden and the far-left lunatics are desperate to stop us by any means necessary,” he says. “They’re willing to violate the US constitution at levels never seen before in order to win this election. Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. It’s a threat.”

^{January 2024}

On the eve of the insurrection’s anniversary, Biden delivers a speech going deep on democracy issues, saying a “determined minority” is doing all it can to “destroy our democracy”. Trump won’t condemn political violence, Biden says. He pledges that democracy is our “sacred cause” that he will protect.

“This is the first national election since [the] January 6 insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy,” Biden says.

In a response to Fox News Digital after the speech, Trump uses his practiced line: “Because of his gross incompetence, Joe Biden is a true threat to democracy.”

In the weeks following the 6 January anniversary, Trump keeps up his rhetoric about democracy.

Back on the campaign trail, Trump tells supporters at an Iowa rally that a vote for him is a vote to “reclaim our democracy from crooked Joe Biden and the entire criminal class in our nation’s capital”.

“It’s never happened, the weaponization of justice like they’re doing right now,” Trump says. “The DoJ is very corrupt. What they’re doing is very corrupt. People aren’t going to take it. Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s weaponizing law enforcement for a high-level election interference.”

After a court hearing about his claim of presidential immunity from prosecution, he says that the justice department’s cases against him, playing out now during an election year where he’s a candidate, are the “real threat to democracy”.

At a New Hampshire rally again later that month, he says the prosecutions of his actions are more akin to what happens in “banana republics, third-world countries”.

“Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. That’s what it is. He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump tells the crowd. “What he’s doing there is so bad, it’s a Pandora’s box. It can happen the other way. And when it happens the other way, it’s going to be a terrible thing, too. And that’s not a threat. That’s just the way life is. That’s the way life works. It doesn’t have to be me. It could be anybody else.”

He closes out the month in Las Vegas, reciting his stump speech about Biden being a threat to democracy because he’s both incompetent and also interfering with Trump’s re-election.

“Incompetence is a gross threat to democracy,” Trump says.

^{March 2024}

At a 2 March rally in Richmond, Virginia, days before Biden’s planned State of the Union address, Trump brings up the democracy line again, saying he’s no threat.

“Joe Biden and his fascists that control him are the real threat to democracy in this country,” Trump says. “They are a big threat, and they are corrupt. They are a big threat. He is the one. They have the standard line: ‘Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.’ Some advertising agency wrote that down. I’m not a threat. I’m the one that’s ending the threat to democracy.”

Biden issues his State of the Union address on 7 March, an energetic defense of Democratic values, where he never uses Trump’s name, instead referring to him as Biden’s “predecessor”.

As expected, democracy is a cornerstone of the speech: Biden notes how democracy is under threat both in the US and around the world.

“January 6 and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the civil war,” he says. “But they failed. America stood strong and democracy prevailed. But we must be honest, the threat remains and democracy must be defended.”

Trump and his allies in Congress “seek to bury the truth about January 6”, the president says. But the moment calls for speaking the truth.

“And here’s the simplest truth: you can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden says. “As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy.”

On 9 March, both Biden and Trump hold rallies in Georgia. There, Trump responds to the State of the Union, calling it an “angry, dark, hate-filled rant” that wouldn’t bring the country together.

“I’m going to bring it together,” Trump says. “He’s a threat to democracy. I will tell you, he’s a threat to democracy. Weaponize government. Weaponize the FBI. Weaponize the DoJ. He’s a threat to democracy for other reasons also. No 1, he’s grossly incompetent.”

In a 16 March speech in Ohio, Trump derides the court cases he faces and again calls the January 6 rioters “patriots” and “hostages”.

He warns that there will be a “bloodbath” if he loses the race, though his campaign later claims Trump was talking about the effects on the auto industry and the economy. Biden’s campaign says the comment was another sign of Trump’s threats of political violence, saying :“He wants another January 6.”

In the speech, Trump starkly lays out what he thinks will happen if he loses the election: US democracy will end.

“I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he says.