Without saying a word about the attack by his supporters on January 6, 2021, the ex-president, who is campaigning for 2024, attacked his successor Joe Biden for his “corruption and failure”.
Donald Trump is campaigning in Iowa this Saturday, January 6, holding two meetings, exactly three years to the day after the attack on the Capitol in Washington, a historic event that divided American voters.
The small Midwestern state is organizing its caucuses on Monday, January 15, marking the start of the 2024 Republican primary, which has given it outsized weight in American presidential campaigns for half a century.
Four criminal charges
The Republican, who despite his four criminal charges dreams of being re-elected in November and returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, will face voters again for the first time since his resounding departure from the presidency of the United States in eight days.
Without saying a word about his supporters' attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump has been in the “great state of Iowa” since Friday evening, where he is scheduled to speak at a meeting on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. local time). Paris) in Newton, near the capital Des Moines, then in a school in Clinton, on the border with Illinois.
In the city of Sioux Center on Friday, the billionaire tribune accused President Joe Biden, “Joe-the-Scum,” of “stoking fears” after a “pathetic campaign speech” in Pennsylvania, where the 81-year-old Democrat lives. compared the 77-year-old Republican's rhetoric to that of “Nazi Germany.”
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He attacked his successor's mandate (2021-2025) as “an unbroken series of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure.” “The people of this state will hold the most important vote of their lives,” said Donald Trump, assessing the context and challenges of 2024 as “even more compelling” than when he won in November 2016.
Despite his legal setbacks and the threat of prison time for his attempts to overturn the results of the November 2020 presidential election, polls show Donald Trump winning 60% of the Republican vote against his primary opponents Nikki Haley and RonDeSantis.
An unprecedented advance
In Iowa and in a number of conservative states around the country, the septuagenarian who has shaken up the American political landscape in less than ten years has a very loyal base that brushes aside his escapades and legal problems.
The attack on the temple of American democracy, the Capitol where Congress meets, just three years ago remains a source of deep division in the United States: a quarter of Americans and 44% of Trump voters believe, without evidence, that the Federal Police (FBI) are the origin, according to a survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland.
1200 arrests
The same FBI announced Saturday the arrest of three people in Florida for their involvement in the Jan. 6 incident. In 35 months of a massive investigation that is still ongoing, authorities have charged more than 1,200 people in nearly all 50 U.S. states. More than half were convicted. “Trump and his MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) supporters not only tolerate political violence, they laugh at it,” Joe Biden complained on Friday.
But Donald Trump denies inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol, even though he still believes the November 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him. To assess the pressure he would have exerted to try to overturn the results, a criminal trial must begin March 4 in Washington. This will be on the eve of one of the most important deadlines in the Republican primaries: “Super Tuesday” in around fifteen states: Texas, California… but also Colorado and Maine.
“Sacrifice” of “Democracy”
The latter two states declared him ineligible for the presidency in December due to his actions on January 6, 2021. The Supreme Court took up this case on Friday, although Trump's name will remain on the list until the February decision in the primary.
Joe Biden and his campaign continue to denounce their rival's desire to “sacrifice democracy” by broadcasting a TV clip with shocking images of the attack on the Capitol that then certified the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The then Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, castigated Donald Trump's “access to the insurrection” on Friday. Three years later, “the threat to our democracy is real,” the elected official warned, while her successor in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, called on Saturday that those responsible for the “atrocious events” of January 6 be brought to justice.