Biden accuses Trump of echoing Hitler, Nazi Germany in 2024 campaign launch

US President Joe Biden has said his 2024 election rival, Donald Trump, was willing to "sacrifice our democracy" to regain power, as Biden kickstarted his campaign with a major speech.

"Donald Trump's campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He's willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power," Biden said on Friday.

"Our campaign is different... Our campaign is about America, it is about you, it's about every age and background that occupy this country. It's about the future."

The upcoming election is "all about whether democracy is still America's sacred cause," he said.

Biden also warned that Trump is willing to use political violence to achieve his goals.

"Trump and his MAGA supporters not only embrace political violence, but they laugh about it," Biden said.

He added that Trump has been using language reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party.

"He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany."

"He proudly posted on social media the words that best describe his 2024 campaign. Quote: revenge. Quote: power in. Quote: dictatorship," Biden said.

"There's no confusion about who Trump is, what he intends to do."

January 6 Capitol attack

Biden also spoke of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots, a moment he referred to as "we nearly lost America — lost it all."

He said that "politics, fear, money" have led many Republicans to abandon their criticism of Trump after the January 6 attack.

In the days after the attack, 52 percent of US adults said Trump bore a lot of responsibility for January 6, according to the Pew Research Center.

By early 2022, that had declined to 43 percent.

The number of Americans who said Trump bore no responsibility increased from 24 percent in 2021 to 32 percent in 2022.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released this week found that about 7 in 10 Republicans say too much is being made of the attack.

Just 18 percent of GOP supporters say that protesters who entered the Capitol were "mostly violent," down from 26 percent in 2021, while 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents say the protesters were mostly violent, essentially unchanged from 2021.