Then he got even more personal, “Was my son, Beau – who lived near the burn pit for a year and came home and died – was he willing to volunteer to serve his country?”
Cindy McCain, the late senator’s wife, said the library, which has yet to be built, grew out of the bipartisan support of Biden, Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs and his predecessor, Republican Governor Doug Ducey. She called it “a fitting legacy for my husband” and recalled how the Bidens had introduced her to her future husband decades earlier.
“I’m so grateful for this,” Cindy McCain said in her husky voice.
Later Thursday, the Treasury Department announced $83 million in federal funds to help build an 83,000-square-foot library near Papago Park.
Republicans competing with Trump for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination have largely avoided challenging his election lie, and Biden said Thursday that voters can’t let him get away with it.
“Democracy is not a partisan issue,” he said. “This is an American issue.”
After the speech, Biden spoke at an Arizona fundraiser for his re-election campaign. Attendees included basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested last year at a Moscow airport on drug-related charges and detained for nearly 10 months.
Many candidates who were supporting Trump’s election lies and running for statewide offices with some influence on the elections — governor, secretary of state, attorney general — lost their midterm races in every presidential battleground state.
Still, in few states does Biden’s message of democracy resonate more than in Arizona, which became politically competitive during Trump’s presidency after seven decades of Republican dominance. Biden’s victory has made the state the focus of efforts to overturn or cast doubt on the results, and some GOP candidates continue to deny basic facts on the election.
