Biden pleads with unprecedented gravity for democracy, Trump responds with fury

“I will not let anyone put the knife under the throat of American democracy”: Joe Biden delivered a speech of unprecedented gravity on Thursday, and charged his predecessor Donald Trump for his responsibility in the assault on Capitol Hill a year ago year.

He accused him of having “tried to prevent a peaceful transfer of power” during this “armed insurgency”, which sought to prevent the certification of the election by the US Congress.

The former Republican president replied with two furious statements, showing that this anniversary, far from reconciling the Americans, exacerbates political antagonisms.

Joe Biden “used my name in an attempt to divide America even further,” said Donald Trump. “This political theater only distracts from the fact that Biden completely and utterly failed.”

– “Loser” –

In fact, the Democratic President has not once appointed Donald Trump, whom he only referred to as “the former president” or “the former losing president”, well aware that this formulation would infuriate the billionaire .

Joe Biden had abandoned his customary bonhomie for an extremely solemn, and sometimes somber tone, in the imposing “hall of statues” of the Capitol, where, on January 6, 2021, supporters of the former president paraded.

The 79-year-old Democrat has delivered a full charge against his predecessor, who “created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election, he did so because he prefers power over principle”, and because that “his injured ego is more important to him than our democracy.”

The former president for his part maintained Thursday that the last election was “rigged”, which he has never provided proof.

– “Never give up” –

“Never forget the crime of the 2020 presidential election. Never give up,” urged Donald Trump.

“Are we going to be a nation that accepts that political violence becomes the norm?”, Asked Joe Biden, believing that the United States was engaged, inside its borders as well as at the outside, in a “struggle” opposing democracy to autocracy.

“I did not seek this battle” assured Joe Biden, while according to a recent poll, only 55% of Americans believe that his election is legitimate.

But “I will not let anyone put the knife at the throat of American democracy,” he said.

To journalists who asked him if he was not afraid of further aggravating the divisions with this speech, the president launched: “When you want to heal, you have to recognize the seriousness of the injury.”

In tone at least, it’s a breakup for Joe Biden. Since the start of his mandate, he has treated Donald Trump and his supporters with ignorance and even contempt, betting on pragmatism and on an ambitious program of economic reforms to reconcile the Americans.

But now, his presidency seems bogged down: the reforms are for some blocked, the return of the Covid-19 pandemic and high inflation demoralize the Americans, and the president, whose confidence rating is very low, struggles to exploit a majority parliamentarian too thin, for lack of cohesion in the democratic ranks.

As for the reconciliation he called for, it seems very distant.

– Absence –

In the opposing camp, the absence on Thursday of all or almost all of the Republican elected officials at the commemorations organized by the Congress, with a Democratic majority, testifies to the immense ascendancy of Donald Trump over the party.

No senator thus participated in a moment of silence organized in the Senate. In the other chamber of Congress, that of representatives, only two leading conservatives, former vice-president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, in open rupture with Donald Trump, showed up.

It is therefore from a distance that several tenors of the party have taken up the same criticism in chorus: that of an “instrumentalisation” of the event by the White House.

The party leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, had spoken in February 2021 of a “moral responsibility” of the former president in the events of January 6.

But he released a statement Thursday accusing Democrats of “exploiting” the anniversary “to promote political goals.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told him Thursday that the commemorations planned by Congress were “nauseous”.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, in her routine press briefing Thursday, castigated “too many” Republicans who “should think about their place in the history books”.

“Do they want to blindly follow the former president, who has instigated an insurgency, like silent sheep?” She asked.

aue / vgr