what the president is doing to combat them and the choice we re going to face between democrats and republicans in the election in the fall. that s what you want to lay out. they can still do that in this speech and it s sort of important for them to have that framework down for democrats to follow for the rest of the year but also understand that is not what s going to break through as much as you would like. what is going to break through is what he has to say about democracy. and, you know, the president has said throughout his time of the campaign and presidency, he is fighting to restore the soul of america, fighting to restore democracy globally and at home. ukraine is that fight brought to the forefront on a massive scale. he can put the supreme court nomination under that rubric of a fight about autocracy versus democracy, making our democratic institution stronger at home. but if i look at these polling
this is bigger than the moment, this is about autocracy versus democracy. if you want to understand the urgency, sitting with the first lady in her viewing box will be the ukrainian ambassador to the united states. it brings home the point that this administration is trying to make in a critical momen t i appreciate your time very much, alexander. first, let me ask you how are you doing tonight? thank you for having me .
with a part of the speech. he said i know the news of what s happening in similar me but i want you to know that we are going to be okay. when the history of this era is done, the rest of the world will be left stronger. it should ve taken anything so terrible for people to see what s at stake, now everyone sees a clearly. we see the unity among the leaders of nations, a more unified europe, and the west. we see unified people in cities and large crowds around the world, even in russia, to demonstrate their support for the ukraine, and the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment. the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security. this is a real test. this has been the through line since day one. you re right, joy, that he did not talk about january six. he talked about voting suppression and he made a case for protecting voting rights deep in the speech. but this is a moment where earlier in his presidency, he would ve talked about the
campaign talking about autocracy versus democracy. he s talked about it pretty consistently during his presidency, but i m told by several sources familiar with this speech he s going to try to tie it, sort of unfortunately, the events have allowed this to make the case for him that this is the ultimate display of what happens when you have an autocratic leader in vladimir putin. having said that, kate, i am told that although the beginning will be very robust, very forward-leaning into this issue, into this crisis, that the bulk of the state of the union speech is not a foreign policy speech. it is much more about the bread and butter issues that he, everybody in this administration and his colleagues on capitol hill, knowing that american people, american voters are still very much hurting. yeah, and polling is suggesting that biden comes into this tonight with work to do and
concepts like right or wrong, true or false, autocracy versus democracy. he values people who help him. russia helped his finances. they helped his campaign. he helped russia as president, did the opposite of all the things that joe biden is trying to do now. donald trump weakened nato. he squeezed ukraine for personal advantage. that got him impeached the first time. and he cozied up to vladimir putin. vladimir putin is somebody, wolf, who wants to re-create a modern version of what ronald reagan once called the evil empire. ronald reagan would not recognize the party right now, the republican party that has followed trump increasingly into a warm relationship with vladimir putin so that they re more interested in criticizing joe biden than they are in standing up to vladimir putin. yeah, i was at that trump/putin summit when trump clearly sided with putin and didn t side with his own u.s. intelligence community, including dan coats, who was the head of the intelligence