In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge.

That's President Biden speaking on Friday, giving a history lesson on the campaign trail.

I'm Adi Cornish, and this is the assignment.

Now, at Valley Forge, George Washington hoped that, quote, with one heart and one mind, his men would surmount every difficulty of the winter ahead.

And they did. Learn new tactics, gathered their resources, boosted morale, and then entered the fight once more.

And if that symbolism hits you like, I don't know, a musketball, the Biden campaign has done its job.

Today we gather in a new year, some 246 years later, just one day before January 6th.

A date forever shared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America,

lost it all. Today, we're here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America's sacred cause? Phil Mattingly is host of CNN

this morning. He's uniquely qualified to help us put Joe Biden's

democracy speech in context. Phil, welcome to the assignment. Thanks for having me.

All right. So first, let's nerd out on Valley Forge, which I know seems ridiculous,

but it's not starting small, right? Tell me why you were kind of interested in teasing this out more,

because you've watched a lot of Biden speeches. Yeah, probably all of them, for the most part, to the point where I can mostly give you verbatim

what he's going to say through most of his stories, even the anecdotal ones that aren't scripted

or weren't drafted by Fenni, his speechwriter, Mike Donnellin, who's kind of his mind meld, if you will, inside the White House.

You know, what was striking to me for this was twofold.

One, there's been a lot of criticism of the Biden campaign over the course of the last

several months that they haven't been active enough, that he hasn't been out enough,

that he's been sheltered.

And this was really kind of the big moment of 2024, the first real campaign event he's had since he launched.

And it felt like a kickoff. Yeah, I don't know if there was a sale on flags, but like the whole

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