TOPLINE
President Joe Biden vehemently hit back against the 2020 election lies pushed by former President Donald Trump that fueled the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building, blaming the ex-president for the violence and decrying how the rioters “held a dagger at the throat of America” in an address Wednesday that marked the one-year anniversary of the insurrection.
KEY FACTS
Biden recalled what Americans saw on January 6, including “rioters rampaging,” waving Confederate flags and assaulting police officers—but noted how Trump sat in the White House “watching it all on television and doing nothing, for hours.”
Trump “created and spread a web of lies” about the election because he “values power over principle,” has a “bruised ego” and “can’t accept he lost,” Biden said.
The president hit back against Trump’s rhetoric that claimed Election Day was the “true insurrection” and the rioters were the “true patriots,” saying the mob that stormed the Capitol was acting “not in service of America, but rather in service of one man.”
American history is at an “inflection point,” Biden said, calling on Americans to “step up” and be “firm, resolute and unyielding in our defense” of the right to vote and for Congress to pass voting rights legislation.
Biden emphasized there is “zero proof” the 2020 presidential results were tainted by fraud, saying efforts by Republicans to undermine the vote count and pass laws that make it harder to vote are “un-American” and show they realize the “only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert the election.”
Trump sowed doubt about the election results even before Election Day because he was “looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover the truth,” Biden said, describing Trump as “not just a former president,” but a “defeated former president.”
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth, but in the shadow of lies?” Biden said. “We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation.”
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Congressional Democrats are still trying to pass voting rights legislation, which has so far been unable to pass the Senate due to opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened Monday the chamber will vote on whether to abolish the filibuster by mid-January if Republicans oppose voting rights. That would allow a bill to pass with only a simple majority rather than have to garner Republican support, but would also require support from Manchin, who is so far still skeptical about backing the proposal, and fellow moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
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