A day earlier than expected, due to the impending storms threatening the East Coast of the United States this weekend, President Joe Biden wanted to use the third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to send a strong message against his predecessor Donald Trump spread. “It was one of the worst derelictions of duty by a president in the history of the United States,” he said at a rally in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, referring to these events. Biden has accused Trump of watching the attack on the seat of Congress on television without taking action to prevent it. He also accuses him of having provoked the attack with his lies.
Biden, who was greeted with shouts of “Four more years!”, tried not to mention Donald Trump early in his presidency. Rather, he was talking about his “predecessor.” But now he has decided to enter the fray with direct attacks against his likely rival in November's presidential election.
“Trump has exhausted every legal option available to him to overturn the 2020 election. The legal route brought him back to the truth that I won the elections and he was a loser. He had only one act left, an act of desperation, the violence of January 6th,” the president explained.
“Trump says he saw a lot of love on January 6th. “The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, has seen a lot of hatred and violence,” he said, adding that political violence should never happen in the United States. The insurgents, he said, “were not trying to defend the will of the people, they were trying to deny the will of the people.” “You can't be pro-insurrectionary and pro-American,” he added. “[El 6 de enero] “We almost lost the United States, we almost lost everything,” he declared.
“What did Trump do? “He called these insurrectionists 'patriots' and promised to pardon them when he returns to the presidency,” Biden said. The president has criticized Trump for “glorifying” political violence rather than condemning it, highlighting the danger he says it poses to democracy – a message he has already used to good effect.
Biden said that Trump “by trying to rewrite the events of January 6th is trying to steal history in the same way he tried to steal the election.” The president recalled that the Voters in the 2022 general election would have refused to elect most of the most radical election deniers who rejected Biden's victory in the 2020 election. And he said he hoped to defeat “the election denier in the boss.” “Trump’s attack on democracy is not just part of his past. That's what he promises for the future. He is not hiding the ball,” he warned, recalling that his rival had spoken of revenge and dictatorship if he returned to power.
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“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him. Not about the United States. Not about you. Donald Trump's campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. “He is willing to sacrifice our democracy to gain power,” Biden said. “There is no confusion about who Trump is or what he is up to,” he added. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we must answer is: Who are we?
Biden delivered his speech in the auditorium of Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, about an hour from downtown Philadelphia. The stage was decorated with four white columns with Corinthian capitals and filled with American flags. About 500 people filled the venue. Biden likes large rallies less than Trump, in part because he doesn't have the same sense of spectacle as Trump.
For his speech, the President sought the symbolic proximity of Valley Forge, where George Washington set up his winter quarters during the American Revolution. But Pennsylvania is also a crucial state in the presidential race. It is the fifth state, along with Illinois, with the most votes in the Electoral College (19). Biden's re-election chances include winning Pennsylvania, where he won in 2020 after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats also achieved their biggest victory in the November 2022 general election by wresting a Senate seat from Republicans. Then-Senator-elect John Fetterman was feted at Biden's event on Friday. He came wearing a sweatshirt and a bright yellow hat that he kept in the auditorium. With his height of around 2 meters and his great corpulence, he did not go unnoticed.
At another point in his speech, the president recalled that at his first rally after announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Trump provoked the attack on the Capitol by playing over the loudspeaker a prisoner song from January 6th from prison and projected screenshots of the attack onto a giant. “Can you believe this?”
In his speech in Iowa on Friday, Trump accused Biden of “abusing the legacy of George Washington” to attack him and his supporters and added his own dire warning about what's at stake in the campaign, saying: ” This election is his last opportunity to save the United States,” reports the AP agency.
Three years later, the attack on the Capitol continues to shape the political and legal agenda of the United States. In addition to the two opposing interpretations of the meaning of this unprecedented attack between Republicans and Democrats, January 6th is still very much alive in the courts in different ways. While more than 1,200 defendants are prosecuted and convicted in most cases, the attack on the Capitol reached the Supreme Court in three different ways. The justices must decide whether this was an insurrection that disqualified Trump from running, whether he then enjoyed presidential immunity, and whether it was a crime of obstruction of an official proceeding (for which dozens of perpetrators have been convicted and that Trump is accused). ) is applicable in this case.
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