Biden marks D-Day anniversary as he aims to shore up ties with Europe - and underscores Trump’s looming threat

When President Joe Biden appears in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, he will invoke the memory of thatfight against the forces of fascism and draw contrasts with his own predecessor who rejected the alliances of Europe, and world order that emerged from the wreckage of the Second World War.

Biden is set to join more than 24 world leaders, and some of the last surviving veterans of the 1944 battle, to mark the day that British, American, and Canadian soldiers landed in France to begin the ten-month process of liberating Europe that would end with the death of Hitler and defeat of Nazi Germany.

According to the White House, Biden is set to deliver remarks at the D-Day commemoration ceremony on Thursday, as well as give a separate speech on the topic of democracy and freedom the next day in Paris.

Both speeches are billed as official events which have no ties to his ongoing re-election fight against former president Donald Trump. But even if he doesn’t mention his predecessor by name, the timing of his visit and the possibility of a change in administration after the US election make the contrasts undeniable.

That contrast will be underscored by the official theme of the D-Day commemoration, one of nations unifying against the renewed, rising threat of authoritarianism. It’s a theme that dovetails closely with the main thrust of Biden’s 2024 White House bid, which has portrayed Trump as an authoritarian threat and the US election as just one front in a larger war between democracy and autocracy.

Biden’s campaign has also argued that Trump, a convicted felon who has threatened to jail his political opponents in retaliation for his prosecution on nearly 100 charges across four jurisdictions, is a singular