Speaking in a somber tone at the U.S. Capitol, President Joe Biden admonished the rioters who ransacked the building one year ago and fiercely criticized former President Donald Trump.
On the first anniversary of the riot, which delayed the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, the president credited law enforcement agencies for “saving the rule of law,” which he said remains threatened today.
DEMOCRATS USE JAN. 6 ANNIVERSARY TO PUSH FOR OVERHAUL OF VOTING LAWS
“For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol,” Biden said. “But they failed. They failed.”
The president listed out the darker details of the riot, saying it was the first time a Confederate flag had been waved inside the building, that fire extinguishers were hurled at police officers, and that rioters were “literally defecating in the hallways” and hunting down members of Congress.
Though he shied away from mentioning Trump by name, Biden repeatedly attacked his predecessor’s actions both before and during the riot.
“A former president of the United States has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” he said. “He’s done so because he values power over principle … he can’t accept that he lost.”
Projecting further, Biden went on the offensive about the Republican Party as a whole, saying its leaders seem to no longer want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, and the Bushes.
“Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written, not to protect the vote but to deny it,” Biden said. “Not only to suppress the vote but to subvert it … the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and to subvert our elections. It’s wrong, it’s undemocratic, and frankly, it’s un-American.”
Biden and other Democratic leaders have been citing the Capitol riot to aid their effort to pass partisan legislation overhauling federal elections.
The president’s comments on the anniversary were less forceful in that regard than Vice President Kamala Harris’s, who spoke before him.
Harris began her speech by comparing Jan. 6 to the Pearl Harbor attack that led the United States into World War II and to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, aggressively calling for changes to voting laws.
“Here in this very building, a decision will be made about whether we uphold the right to vote and ensure free and fair elections,” she said. “Let’s be clear, we must pass the voting rights bills that are now before the Senate.”
Republicans have recoiled at the effort to tie Jan. 6 to the Democrats’ voting legislation.
“It is beyond distasteful for some of our colleagues to ham-fistedly invoke the Jan. 6 anniversary to advance these aims,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday.
Biden is also promoting the bills, which are stalled in the upper chamber with all 50 GOP senators opposed, even saying he supports scrapping the filibuster in order to see them through.
But he was more measured in his remarks Thursday morning, sounding an optimistic tone about the future of democracy without mentioning the bills directly.
While countries such as China are betting that democracy’s days are numbered, he said, he doesn’t believe that’s the case.
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“Let’s step up and write the next chapter in American history,” Biden said. “Where Jan. 6 marks not the beginning of the end of American democracy, but a renaissance of liberty and fair play.”
