Joe Biden has urged American citizens not to forget the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol – and has repeated his declaration that his presidential predecessor and successor Donald Trump threatened democracy by inciting his supporters to carry out the assault.
Speaking on the eve of the fourth anniversary of what was widely viewed as a violent insurrection, the outgoing president warned reporters of the dangers of forgetting the attempt by Trump’s supporters to overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election or downplaying it as trivial now that Trump was about to return to the White House.
“I think it should not be rewritten,” Biden said. “I don’t think it should be forgotten.”
Biden said he was determined to preside over a peaceful handover of power that Trump – insisting, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen – had denied him when he took office.
“If you notice, I’ve reached out to make sure the smooth transition [happens],” Biden said. “We’ve got to get back to basic, normal transfer of power. I don’t think we should pretend it [January 6] didn’t happen.”
Biden made a point of inviting Trump back to the White House after he defeated Vice-President Kamala Harris in November’s election, telling him “welcome back” in front of television cameras. It was a courtesy Trump did not extend to Biden as his incoming successor after the 2020 race.
But Biden made clear that he believed his previous warning about Trump being “a threat to democracy” still held.
“I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy, and I’m hopeful that we’re beyond it,” he said.
Biden’s remarks also included a testy exchange with journalists at which he appeared to take issue with references to his advanced age of 82.
Ironically, in November, Trump at 78 became the oldest president ever elected.
Footage at a White House event to sign the Social Security Fairness Act into law captured Biden saying: “My being the oldest president, I know more world leaders than any one of you ever met in your whole goddamn life.”
Biden’s preoccupation with the events of four years ago surfaced as the Capitol was due to host a joint session of both houses of Congress to certify Trump’s win. Democrats have indicated that they will refrain from lodging even symbolic challenges against any of Trump’s electors in a pointed display meant to emphasise the importance of a peaceful transfer of power.
It falls to Harris to certify the outcome of the election she lost.
The president reinforced his message in an opinion article published in the Washington Post on Monday, writing that “we should be proud” that US democracy withstood the assault of 2021 and that “we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year”.
But warning against historical amnesia, he added: “But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.”
He accused Republicans of trying to downplay the significance or mis-portray the nature of the January 6 events.
“An unrelenting effort has been under way to rewrite – even erase – the history of that day,” Biden said. “To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes.”
He noted that attackers stormed the Capitol, smashed windows, kicked down doors and beat law enforcement officers unconscious. A bipartisan congressional report has linked the attack to several deaths, including officer suicides.
Trump has repeatedly pledged to pardon convicted participants as one of his first acts back in office. More than 1,000 people have so far been found guilty of offences related to the attack.
Biden wrote that he would attend Trump’s inauguration, a pointed contrast to Trump’s deliberate snub of his.
A 2022 Act of Congress decreeing that a plaque be displayed at the Capitol in honour of the police officers who responded to the attack has not been enacted, the Associated Press reported, prompting fears among Democrats that the event is being airbrushed from the historical memory.
“It’s been erased,” Peter Welch, a Democratic senator for Vermont, told AP. “Winners write history and Trump won. And his version is that it was a peaceful gathering. Obviously completely untrue.”
Article by:Source Robert Tait in Washington
