President Joe Biden’s Thursday morning address commemorating the anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot would have been a fine speech if it weren’t for the glaring hypocrisy oozing out of it.
He criticized former President Donald Trump for refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election and spreading “a web of lies” that led hundreds of pro-Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building.
But in 2020, Biden spread his own web of lies about the 2016 election, telling a supporter on the campaign trail that he “agrees” Trump was an “illegitimate president” who stole the presidency with the help of Russia.
Here’s Joe Biden in 2020 telling a woman that he absolutely agrees with her that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president pic.twitter.com/7zwYcEZWv0
— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) January 6, 2022
Vice President Kamala Harris made a similar claim in 2020, telling an interviewer he was “absolutely right” to say Trump was an “illegitimate” president who stole the 2016 election. Was that not a threat to democracy?
FLASHBACK: Two years ago, Kamala Harris explicitly agreed with the claim that the 2016 election was “illegitimate,” and that Donald Trump was an “illegitimate” president. pic.twitter.com/8HJJKqkin1
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 6, 2022
Biden and Harris are hardly the only Democrats to buy into the debunked Russia hoax, nor are they the only Democrats to spread election conspiracy theories that were just as false and damaging as Trump’s. Stacey Abrams, for example, still insists she is the lawful winner of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, and not one Democrat has condemned her for it. In fact, Biden even thought about making her his vice president.
The president went on to condemn the Capitol rioters’ disregard for the rule of law, saying, “You can’t obey the law only when it is convenient.”
Exactly — but that’s also what his party encouraged throughout the summer of 2020 when they justified and endorsed rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Hundreds of businesses were burned to the ground, police officers were physically attacked, and government property was defaced and, in some cases, destroyed. The nature of that cause does nothing to justify levels of violent activity that go far above and beyond what happened at the Capitol one year ago.
I think most people not blinded by partisanship believe that election integrity matters and that all political violence is wrong. But the Democratic Party agrees with the idea that “democracy” is under threat only when it is politically convenient. They’ll spread election lies about Trump and Abrams, but they complain when Trump turns around and tells his own lies. And they’ll excuse or turn a blind eye to violent leftist rioters who attacked federal buildings for an entire summer but complain when violent right-wingers follow suit.
So, Biden can save his lecture and perhaps do a bit of self-reflection while he’s at it. The Capitol riot didn’t just happen in a vacuum. Trump might have incited it, but Biden’s party, with its years of election conspiracy theorizing and the months of encouraging violent rioting, set the stage for Jan. 6. They, like Trump, must own their own part of it.
