Joe Biden blasts Donald Trump on anniversary of January 6 Capitol riots

Joe Biden has launched an unprecedented and scathing attack on Donald Trump on the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riots.

US President Joe Biden speaks at the US Capitol on January 6, 2022, to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol in Washington, DC.

Joe Biden has ripped into his predecessor Donald Trump on the anniversary of the January 6 for watching the riot on TV, saying his “bruised ego mattered more to him than Democracy”.

The New York Post reports that Mr Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took turns slamming the rioters while pushing the sweeping legislation during remarks in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, which is located between the building’s central Rotunda and House chamber.

Joe Biden called Donald Trump a defeated former president.

Mr Biden repeatedly and harshly attacked his predecessor, at one point saying, “He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes.”

Mr Biden said rioters were “literally defecating in the hallways, rifling through the desks of senators and representatives, hunting down members of Congress.”

“Patriots? Not in my view,” Mr Biden said. “You can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t obey the law only when is convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.”

He accused them of holding a “dagger in the throat of democracy’”.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump, including member of the QAnon conspiracy group Jake Angeli, aka Yellowstone Wolf (C), enter the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

“We saw with our own eyes rioters menace these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House. Literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America,” Mr Biden recalled. “What did we not see? We didn’t see a former president, who just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in a private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours.”

US President Joe Biden wipes his eyes as Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on the one year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capito.

“This wasn’t a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection,” he said.

He did not mention his predecessor by name but repeatedly referred to him as ‘the former president,’ accusing Mr Trump of creating and spreading ‘a web of lies about the 2020 election.’

Mr Trump responded by calling Mr Biden’s speech “political theatre”, continuing to push the “big lie” that the election was stolen.

“Biden is working hard to try and deflect the incompetent job he is doing, and has done, on the horrible Afghanistan withdrawal (surrender), the Borders, Covid, inflation, loss of energy independence, and much more. Everything he touches turns to failure. That’s what you get when you have a rigged election,” he said.

A man calls on people to raid the building as Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol in Washington D.C.

Republicans have blocked passage of the election reform bill in the evenly divided Senate, where most bills require 60 votes. Centrist Democrats have refused to lower the threshold to a simple majority, in effect killing the bill that aims to override state laws that restrict mail-in voting and establish other election rules that Democrats claim will lower participation.

Before the riot, Mr Trump told thousands of supporters near the White House that the election was “stolen” and urged them to march to Capitol Hill to support objections lodged by Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley against the certification of electors from key swing states.

The mob subsequently stormed the Capitol — sending politicians and Vice President Mike Pence fleeing to safety.

Mr Trump had urged Mr Pence, who was presiding over the formalities, to reject electors on his own, but Mr Pence declined to do so.

Mr Trump had planned to hold a Thursday afternoon news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida., but he pulled the plug on Tuesday in a statement bashing the media and a Democrat-led House select committee that’s seeking his presidential records pertaining to the riot. Trump is suing to assert executive privilege over those records held by the National Archives.

US President Donald Trump watched on TV while the Capitol was being attacked.

“In light of the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans, and the Fake News Media, I am cancelling the January 6th Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump was banned by Twitter and suspended from Facebook after the riot. He said last year in an interview with the Washington Post that he didn’t think his supporters would storm the building.

“They were ushered in by the police,” Mr Trump told Post reporters Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig. “I mean, in all fairness — the Capitol Police were ushering people in. The Capitol Police were very friendly. You know, they were hugging and kissing.”

Although police were friendly with intruders at times, rioters also fought for hours against officers at various entrances. A battle between cops and rioters erupted within the Capitol Rotunda and in other parts of the building.

Mr Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, 36, was fatally shot by a police officer while attempting to climb through a busted-out window into the House Speaker’s Lobby. Three other Trump supporters died of medical emergencies during the riot and Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, 42, himself a Trump supporter, died of a stroke one day after the riot. Four cops and at least one accused rioter later died by suicide.

Ashli Babbitt, right, pictured with husband Aaron Babbitt, died while storming the Capitol.

US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, himself a Trump supporter, died defending the Capitol.

Mr Trump said in a different interview last year with David Drucker of the Washington Examiner that he wanted to march on the Capitol with the crowd.

“I said I was going to go down with the crowd. But [the Secret Service] wouldn’t let me go. I think if I did go down there, I would have stopped the people from doing anything bad,” Trump said.

But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Mr Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the riot and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

Republicans have pushed back on Democrats investigating Mr Trump and his allies, which the former president says amounts to a “witch hunt,” and are even more united against Mr Biden’s proposed election law, calling it federal overreach.

“Democrats’ partisan power-grab ‘election reform’ bill is not about voting rights,” Sen. McConnell said in May. “It’s about letting Washington Democrats control the terms of political debate and all 50 states’ election laws.”

“It is beyond distasteful for some of our colleagues to ham-fistedly invoke the Jan. 6 anniversary to advance these aims,” the Kentucky Republican insisted on Wednesday. “Washington Democrats have been trying to seize control over elections for years. The first draft of the legislation at hand was introduced in January 2019.”

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday that more than 725 people have been arrested and charged with crimes for participating in the riot and the House voted last month to hold in contempt former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for declining to testify to the committee investigating the events.

Mr Meadows handed over nearly 9000 pages of emails and text messages before cutting off contact. Those documents included desperate pleas from journalists, politicians and even Donald Trump Jr. asking Mr Meadows to get Mr Trump to help calm the mob.

Mr Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon was indicted in November by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to testify before the committee — in the first such prosecution since 1983. Bannon was not a White House employee at the time of the riot.

The riot caught politicians, police and journalists off-guard and it took hours for order to be restored. Mr Biden’s victory was certified by broad margins when the ballot-counting process resumed and Mr Trump relinquished power two weeks later — though he’s teasing a potential rematch in 2024.

House Democrats joined by 10 Republicans impeached Mr Trump last January for allegedly inciting the riot. Mr Trump was acquitted by the Senate in a 57-43 vote, with seven Republicans finding him guilty — short of the two-thirds threshold required by the Constitution.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and is republished here with permission