President Biden warned Individuals to not neglect the violent assault that occurred on the Capitol 4 years in the past, and he accused President-elect Donald J. Trump and his supporters of making an attempt “to rewrite — even erase — the historical past of that day.”
Since Election Day, Mr. Biden has targeted on guaranteeing a clean and orderly transition of energy — one thing that Mr. Trump refused to ship as he was leaving workplace on the finish of his first time period. However on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6 assault, Mr. Biden addressed the problem immediately.
“To inform us we didn’t see what all of us noticed with our personal eyes,” he wrote in The Washington Put up. “To dismiss issues about it as some type of partisan obsession. To elucidate it away as a protest that simply obtained out of hand.”
“This isn’t what occurred,” he wrote.
At a reception Sunday night for members of Congress, the president echoed his essay in remarks, saying that democracy had been “actually put to the take a look at” and speaking concerning the problem of defending it.
It was hardly the primary time Mr. Biden has urged folks to recollect what occurred on that violent day.
In 2022, a yr after the Capitol assault, Mr. Biden stood within the constructing’s Statuary Corridor to sentence the marauding mob that had tried to cease the certification of his victory. He denounced Mr. Trump’s actions as president on that day.
“At this second,” Mr. Biden declared, “we should resolve: What sort of nation are we going to be?”
In November, Individuals delivered their reply: Three years after Mr. Biden’s speech, Mr. Trump’s return to workplace is ready to be affirmed by Congress on Monday. Now, in his ultimate days in workplace, Mr. Biden is reckoning with the truth that his repeated warnings concerning the risk that Mr. Trump posed to democracy went unheeded by many citizens.
Till Sunday evening, Mr. Biden had not repeated his warnings concerning the destiny of democracy if Mr. Trump regained the White Home. Two days after the election, the president supplied a extra optimistic evaluation of the long run. He stated he had congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory and he didn’t repeat his issues about what that meant for the nation.
“The American experiment endures, and we’re going to be OK,” Mr. Biden stated.
The next week, Mr. Biden met with Mr. Trump within the Oval Workplace for 2 hours. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White Home press secretary, stated the president had instructed his workers to do what Mr. Trump had refused to do 4 years earlier: Be gracious.
“You’re going to listen to me persevering with to say this over and over: the significance of getting a clean transition, an significance of getting an orderly transition,” Ms. Jean-Pierre informed reporters. “The president respects the desire of the American folks and desires to make it possible for happens.”
The vote might be licensed on Monday in the identical course of that was interrupted by the rebellion in 2021. Vice President Kamala Harris will oversee the certification, and Mr. Biden is scheduled to be away in New Orleans when it occurs, providing solace to the victims of a New Yr’s Day terror assault within the metropolis.
