U.S. President Joe Biden warned Friday that Donald Trump’s efforts to retake the White House in 2024 pose a grave threat to the country, the day before the third anniversary of the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol by then-president Trump’s supporters aiming to keep him in power.
Speaking near Valley Forge, Penn., where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago, Biden said that Jan. 6, 2021, marked a moment where “we nearly lost America — lost it all.”
He said the presidential race — a likely rematch with Trump, who is the far-and-away Republican front-runner — is “all about” whether American democracy will survive.
The speech, the president’s first political event of the election year, was intended to clarify the expected choice for voters this fall. Biden — who re-entered political life because he said he felt he was best capable of defeating Trump in 2020 — believes focusing on defending democracy to be central for persuading voters to reject Trump once again.
“We all know who Donald Trump is,” Biden said. “The question we have to answer is: Who are we?”
Biden laid out Trump’s role in the Capitol attack, as a mob of the Republican’s supporters overran the building while lawmakers were counting Electoral College votes that certified Democrat Biden’s win.
More than 100 police officers were bloodied, beaten and attacked by the rioters who overwhelmed authorities to break into the building.
The U.S. Constitution could disqualify former president Donald Trump from the 2024 election campaign because of his alleged role in the Capitol riot. Andrew Chang explains a rarely used section of the 14th Amendment and breaks down the arguments we’ll hear in ongoing court cases.
Trump ‘glorifying’ violence
“What’s Trump done? He’s called these insurrectionists ‘patriots,'” Biden said, “and he promised to pardon them if he returns to office.”
He chastised Trump for “glorifying” rather than condemning political violence.
At least nine people who were at the Capitol that day died during or after the rioting, including several officers who died by suicide, a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who authorities said suffered medical emergencies.
Biden said that by “trying to rewrite the facts of Jan. 6, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election.”
Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of his chief rival.
“The only reason Biden is at Valley Forge abusing George Washington’s legacy to slander 75 million Americans is that he knows he can’t show his face at the southwest border, or in East Palestine, Ohio, or at the autoworkers’ factories in Michigan where he is destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Trump was to say at a campaign event in Sioux Center, Iowa on Friday according to prepared remarks released by his campaign.
Biden, in his remarks, seized on Trump’s grievances and his pledges to get retribution on his political enemies.
“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him,” Biden said, saying it was Trump’s aim to get retribution on his political enemies. “Not America. Not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future.”
He added: “There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do.”
Before his remarks, Biden, joined by his wife Jill, participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at Valley Forge National Arch, which honours the troops who camped there from December 1777 to June 1778.
He also toured the home that served as Washington’s headquarters.
Biden invoked Washington’s decision to resign his commission as the leader of the Continental Army after American independence was won — and the painting commemorating that moment that resides in the Capitol Rotunda — to cast Trump as unworthy of Washington’s legacy.
“He could have held onto that power as long as he wanted,” Biden said of Washington.
“But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops of Valley Forge had fought for. In America, our leaders don’t hold on to power relentlessly. Our leaders return power to the people — willingly.”