Joe Biden uses January 6 US Capitol attack anniversary speech to condemn Donald Trump
US President Joe Biden uses his speech on the first anniversary of the attack on US Capitol to condemn Donald Trump’s ‘web of lies’.
President Joe Biden has attacked former president Donald Trump and made a powerful defence of the 2020 election to mark the first anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, enraging the former president.
Vice President Kamala Harris also compared the turmoil a year ago to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.
Addressing the nation amid the Greek revival splendour of the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, Mr Biden condemned the “violent mob” of January 6 for perpetuating a “brutal attack” that threatened the US constitution and the “will of the people”.
In what was the most powerful, fluent and rhetorical speech of his presidency so far, Mr Biden stridently defended the integrity of the 2020 election, slamming Mr Trump, although never by name, for “creating and spreading a web of lies” to undermine it.
“He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution,” he said.
“He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 US senators, his own Attorney-General, his own Vice President, and governors in every battle ground state said”.
Mr Trump hit back within two hours of Mr Biden’s speech, in a terse, furious statement accusing the president of “destroying America” through “insane policies of open borders, corrupt elections, disastrous energy policies, unconstitutional mandates and devastating school closures”.
Mr Trump said the Congressional Select Committee charged with investigating the riots was the “Unselect Committee … filled with totally partisan hacks”.
“The Democrats want to own this day of January 6th so they can stoke fears and divide America. I say, let them have it because America sees right through their lies and polarisation”.
Since leaving office, Mr Trump – who has hinted to plans to run again for the presidency in 2024 – has repeatedly argued the election was “stolen” owing to the manufacture of fraudulent votes in key swing states, a claim never corroborated across multiple legal challenges.
“No election in American history has been more closely scrutinised or more carefully counted. Every legal challenge in every court was rejected, and often by Republican appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself,” Mr Biden said in his speech.
Americans remain bitterly divided on the characterisation of the US Capitol events of January 6, which saw members of congress, as well as then Vice President Mike Pence, whisked away by police to avoid protesters as they were trying to certify the results of the presidential election.
More than 90 per cent of Democrats believe the former president bears either “a great deal” or “a good amount” of responsibility, while 78 per cent of Republicans say he bears either “just some” or none, according to an ABC/IPSOS poll in late December.
Mr Trump, whom Democrats blame for inciting the riots and doing little to stop it, had earlier cancelled an address of his own from his home in Florida, blaming the news media for biased coverage.
“For first time in our history, a president had not just lost election, but tried to prevent peaceful transfer of power as violent mob breached Capitol … watching it all on TV and doing nothing for hours,” Mr Biden went on, a reference to a recent finding of the Congressional January 6th commission.
In his speech of around 20 minutes, Mr Biden said the 2020 election, which he won by 306 electoral college votes to 232, was “the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country”.
The president also decried the transformation of the Republican party “into something else”, no longer “the party of Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower and the Bushes”, slamming republican states for trying to tighten voting identification rules.
“Right now in state after state, people are seeking not to protect the vote but to deny it … to suppress the vote and subvert it.”
Ms Harris, speaking before the president, compared January 6 to the Japanese attack on Pearl harbour in December 1941 and the terrorist attack on New York and the Pentagon in September 2001.
“These dates occupy not only a place on our calendar but a place in our collective memory,” she said, calling out “lies and misinformation whose roots run old and deep”.
“The extremists who roamed these halls targeted not only lives of leaders they sought to degrade and destroy, not only the building hallowed as it is: they were assaulting the institutions, the values the ideals that generations of Americans have marched picketed and shed blood to establish and defend.”
The Vice President, who also spoke well, appealed to Americans to support Democrat electoral reform bills stuck in Congress, which would transfer states’ electoral rule-setting powers to the federal government.
“The American spirit is being tested. We must uphold the right to vote and ensure free and fair elections. We must pass voting rights bill before the Senate,” she said.
They have little chance of passage unless Democrat senators agree to reduce the required Senate majority from 60 to 51 in the 100 seat chamber.
Mr Biden also urged Americans to “step up and write the next chapter of our history, [to] begin a renaissance of liberty and fair play”.
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