US President Joe Biden will highlight Donald Trump’s “special responsibility” in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol on Thursday in a speech on the first anniversary of the event that shook American democracy, a the White House declared Wednesday.
Since taking office last January, the Democratic leader has always avoided attacking his predecessor directly, even though the former Republican president has continued to challenge his victory in the November 2020 election.
In his speech on Thursday, Joe Biden “expose the significance of what happened on Capitol Hill and President Trump’s particular responsibility in the chaos and carnage we have seen and he will forcefully push back against the lies spread by the former President in order to deceive the American people and his own supporters and to forget his role in the events“White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will speak Thursday morning at Congress headquarters, a year after supporters of Donald Trump assaulted the building in an attempt to block certification of presidential election results.
Joe Biden, and Jen Psaki, “is lucid about the threat the former president poses to our democracy and how the former president consistently works to undermine America’s core values and the rule of law“.
This assault, which claimed the lives of five people, is considered by Joe Biden as “the tragic culmination of what these four years of Trump’s presidency have done to our country“, added Jen Psaki, also denouncing “silence and complacency” many members of the Republican Party since that day.
Contacted by Reuters, a spokesperson for Donald Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Four people died on the day of the riots, a Capitol policeman defending the building died the next day from his injuries. Dozens of other police officers were injured in the assault and four police officers have committed suicide since that date.
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