Trump brands Biden 'enemy of the state' at Pennsylvania rally
Donald Trump branded Joe Biden an "enemy of the state" as he hit back at the US president's assertion that the Republican and his supporters are undermining American democracy, and slammed last month's FBI raid of his Florida home.
Making his first public appearance since the August 8 raid, Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania that the search was a "travesty of justice" and warned it would produce "a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen."
"There can be no more vivid example of the very real threats from American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history," Trump claimed, despite long-standing protocols by which the Justice Department and the FBI act independently of the White House.
Trump told cheering supporters at the "Save America" gathering in the city of Wilkes-Barre that the "egregious abuse of the law" was going to produce "a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen."
He also hit back at Biden's speech this week in which the president said his predecessor and Republican supporters "represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic."
Speaking in Philadelphia, the cradle of US democracy, the president launched an extraordinary assault on those Republicans who embrace Trump's "Make America Great Again" ideology -- and urged his own supporters to fight back in what he billed as a "battle for the Soul of the Nation."
Trump slammed it as the "most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president."
