US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the nation on Thursday, marking the anniversary of the deadly attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Recall on January 6, 2021, a mob stormed the Capitol building in an effort to halt the confirmation of Biden's victory, fuelled by Trump's claims of election fraud. Reportedly, five people died, and over 130 police officers sustained various degrees of injuries.
See below an NY Post-photo-capture of what
unfolded on that fateful day:
Speaking at one of the sites where Trump supporters violently surged into the US Capitol, President Biden said that US must assure that such a riot "never happens again."
"Democracy was attacked — simply attacked," Biden said.
In a story captioned “Biden Attacks Trump In Capitol Riot Anniversary Speech” Punch Newspapers reports that President Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump Thursday on the first anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, calling him a selfish liar who could not accept defeat and vowing to defend America's democracy.
In a powerful speech at Congress's Statuary Hall, one of the very spots where a pro-Trump mob ran amok a year ago, Biden took off the gloves after a year of largely ignoring Trump, the report stated further.
"The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election," Biden said, alluding to Trump's repeated false claim that the election was stolen from him through fraud -- an assertion that many Republicans still embrace.
"He's done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest," Biden said.
Biden said the United States and much of the world is locked in a battle between democracy and autocracy.
"I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy," Biden said at the Capitol. "I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation."
NBC News however reports that ‘In a speech Thursday morning noting the anniversary, President Joe Biden placed blame on Trump for the attempted insurrection and pushed back on many of the former president's false claims about the 2020 election.
‘Biden called Trump a "defeated former president" and vowed not to shrink from the fight against those who have sought to undermine the electoral process. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats reflected on the riot by renewing their voting rights push.
Below are some of the updates Aljazeera
presented it its report on the one-year anniversary of the US Capitol riot:
Trump to launch new social media venture next month
Former
US President Donald Trump’s new media venture plans to launch its social media
app Truth Social next month, according to an Apple App Store listing.
TRUTH Social, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) alternative to Twitter, is available for pre-order before going live on the US Presidents’ Day holiday on February 21.
Similar to Twitter, the app offers features to follow other people and trending topics, according to demo photos. The launch would come 13 months after Twitter and Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook banned Trump for encouraging his supporters to participate in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol based on unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Republicans respond to Biden’s speech: ‘I don’t trust our government’
Two
Republican representatives, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have given a
response to Biden’s speech on January 6. They were unapologetic in supporting
former President Donald Trump’s inaccurate claims of election fraud, which
helped spark the riot.
“We’re ashamed of nothing,” Florida Congressman Gaetz said. “We’re proud of the work we did on January 6 and we’re actually going to walk the grounds that patriotic Americans walked from the White House to the Capitol.”
“I can tell your right now, I don’t trust our government,” Congresswoman Greene said of investigations into violence on January 6. “We have a lot of questions to ask, and the people who should be answering questions is our FBI and Department of Justice,” she said.
Democrat lawmaker: US must ‘remain uncomfortable’ with January 6
Americans
must “remain uncomfortable” with the events of January 6, progressive
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley has said, calling for holding all those
responsible for the riot accountable.
Pressley, the first Black woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress, said in a statement on Thursday that white supremacy continues to threaten US democracy a year after the Capitol attack. She warned against complacency in confronting the far-right and called for reforms to protect voting rights, including abolishing the filibuster – a legislative process that allows the minority in the Senate to block major legislation.
“As a Black woman in America – to experience the ancestral trauma of a violent white supremacist mob seizing the building, brandishing Confederate flags and erecting a noose on the Capitol grounds was all too familiar – and tragically, the threat remains today,” Pressley said.
Obama blasts politicians who ‘fabricate lies’
“Historically,
Americans have been defenders of democracy and freedom around the world –
especially when it’s under attack,” former US President Barack Obama said in a
statement on Thursday.
“But we can’t serve that role when leading figures in one of our two major political parties are actively undermining democracy at home. We can’t set an example when our own leaders are willing to fabricate lies and cast doubt on the results of free and fair elections.”
Former VP Dick Cheney ‘deeply disappointed’ in Republican leadership
Just
two Republicans were spotted at a House of Representatives session marking the
riot’s anniversary: Representative Liz Cheney, who has been shunned by party
colleagues after criticising Trump, and her father Dick Cheney, who served as
vice president under President George W Bush.
“A party that is in thrall to a cult of personality is a party that is dangerous to the country,” Liz Cheney told reporters on her way out of the Capitol.
Dick Cheney told reporters that current party leaders do not resemble “any of the folks I knew” when he served in Congress. “I’m deeply disappointed we don’t have better leadership in the Republican Party to restore the Constitution,” he also told ABC News.
Healing US’s divide will be a generational project: Analyst
The
current political divisions in the US are much sharper than in any other Western
democracy, a geopolitical risk consultant said, and Biden’s speech on Thursday
will do little to heal them.
“Addressing the political divisions will be a matter of a generation, not just one president,” Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the consultancy Eurasia Group, told Al Jazeera.
Plans to spend one trillion dollars on infrastructure may help reduce inequality and anger from some Americans, Bremmer said. But a large number of white American men with low education levels have seen their standard of living decline in recent years, he said, and responding to growing inequality and resentment will not be easy.
“When Biden at the beginning of the year said, ‘America is back,’ it is hard to square that with him saying today that democracy is in crisis,” Bremmer explained.
Florida’s Republican governor slams media coverage of January 6
“The
D.C., New York media – this is their Christmas, January 6,” said Florida
Governor Ron DeSantis. “They are going to take this and milk this for anything
they could to try to be able to smear anyone who ever supported Donald Trump.”
Congress marks anniversary of January 6 with moment of silence
Members
of the US House of Representatives marked the first anniversary of the January
6 attack on the US Capitol with a moment of silence at the start of a session.
Congress, however, remains deeply divided over the riot. Many Republican legislators did not mark the moment of silence.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, for instance, said he has no plans to memorialize the day, and he doesn’t think others should, either. “This thing has already become way too politicised, and that would just further exacerbate it,” he said.
Unlike in past national traumas – including the 2001 attacks – the US has emerged from January 6 without an agreed-upon plan for what comes next.
Some notable Republicans call out party over January 6
Some
prominent Republicans, including a handful of sitting legislators and party
grandees, have criticised their party for its response to the Capitol riot.
“My criticisms are often aimed at Democrats; on the anniversary of Jan. 6, I’m addressing squarely those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupted Congress as it received the Electoral College’s results, and violently attempted to overturn the election,” Karl Rove, a Republican consultant and former senior adviser in the George W Bush administration, wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
“If Democrats had done what some Trump supporters did on that violent Jan. 6, Republicans would have criticized them mercilessly and been right to do so,” Rove wrote. “There can be no soft-pedaling what happened and no absolution for those who planned, encouraged and aided the attempt to overthrow our democracy. Love of country demands nothing less.”
Republican Representative Liz Cheney said, “Our institutions held, but they only held because of the people who were willing to stand up against the pressure from former President Trump.
“The threat continues. Former President Trump continues to make the same claims that he knows caused violence on January 6.”
‘Brazen politicisation’: Republican lawmakers react to Biden’s speech
Top
Republican legislators have reacted with anger over President Joe Biden’s
speech at the January 6 events.
“What brazen politicisation of January 6 by President Biden,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally. “I wonder if the Taliban who now rule Afghanistan with al-Qaeda elements present, contrary to President Biden’s beliefs, are allowing this speech to be carried?”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who clashed with Trump over election fraud conspiracies, called January 6 a “dark day for Congress and our country” as the Capitol was “stormed by criminals who brutalised police officers and used force to try to stop Congress from doing its job”.
He also blasted Democrats.
“It is especially jaw-dropping to hear some Senate Democrats invoke the mob’s attempt to disrupt our country’s norms, rules, and institutions as a justification to discard our norms, rules, and institutions themselves,” Mitch McConnell said.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Green said: “The real insurrectionists I think are the Democrats because of what they are doing to our country and how they are completely perverting the Constitution and Congress.”
Trump blasts Biden’s speech
Former
President Donald Trump has lashed out at President Joe Biden over his speech at
the January 6 commemorations.
Biden, a Democrat, “used my name today to try to further divide America”, Trump said in a written statement issued on Thursday. “This political theater is all just a distraction.”
Trump, a Republican, accused Biden of “destroying our nation” with “insane” border policies, “corrupt elections” and “devastating school closures”.
No signs of protest outside the Capitol
Outside
the US Capitol, a few people came out to mark the anniversary of the January 6
riot where thousands had protested a year ago.
Journalists far outnumbered spectators outside the Capitol, Al Jazeera’s Ali Harb reported from the scene.
With snow still on the ground in Washington, DC, the scene seemed “eerily quiet” with many “observers and very little action”, Harb said.
Most Republican lawmakers boycott commemorations
Only
a hand full of Republican legislators are participating in events commemorating
the January 6 riot, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna reported from Washington, DC.
“Many others agree with former president Trump’s incorrect assertion that the last election was stolen,” Hanna said.
The memorial events were presented as an attempt to unify a divided nation with the aim of preserving democracy, but attendance at the commemorations has largely been determined along partisan lines.
In his speech on Thursday, Biden took direct aim at the former Republican president.
“This was not a speech to bring both sides together – this was a speech calling out Donald Trump for the events of January 6,” said Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher reporting from Washington, DC.
Biden says Trump is spreading a ‘web of lies’
President
Biden has accused his predecessor Trump of spreading a “web of lies” about the last
US election and American democracy during a speech commemorating the January 6,
2021 storming of the Capitol.
“He’s done so because he values power over principle because he sees his own interest was more important than his country’s interest,” Biden said of Trump. “His bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution,” Biden said in Statuary Hall, an area which rioters paraded through one year ago.
“He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said he lost.”
Biden, who was visibly angry in his speech, said the storming of the Capitol was unprecedented in US history.
Trump, he said, did what no other president in American history has ever done: “He refused to accept the result of the election.”
The president called the events of January 6, 2021 “an armed insurrection”. The rioters “were looking to deny the will of the people. They weren’t looking for a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one.”
“At this moment we must decide what kind of nation we are going to be,” Biden told the memorial. “Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?”
VP Kamala Harris: ‘The strength of democracy is the rule of law’
In
an address at the Capitol on Thursday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris
warned of continuing threats to US democracy.
“The strength of democracy is that it empowers the people,” Harris said at an event marking the riot. “And the fragility of democracy is this: if we are not vigilant, if we do not defend it, democracy simply will not stand. The strength of democracy is the rule of law.”
‘I fear for our democracy’: Jimmy Carter
Former
US President Jimmy Carter, says “toxic polarization” threatens the US
democratic system, with those promoting the “lie that the election was stolen”
taking over the Republican Party and stoking distrust.
The 39th president recounted in an opinion piece in The New York Times how in 1962 he was able to overcome an attempt at election fraud in the courts.
Carter called on Americans to accept constitutional principles and the rule of law, to support reforms that ensure “security and accessibility” of elections, resist polarisation, and address the spread of disinformation heightening the US political divide.
The US “teeters on the brink of a widening abyss … at genuine risk of civil conflict”, he wrote, saying Americans must work together before it is too late.
US attorney general pledges accountability
US
Attorney General Merrick Garland has promised to ensure justice and
accountability for the January 6 Capitol riot.
In a news conference on Wednesday, Garland said the US Department of Justice would not relent in prosecuting people who broke the law during what he described as an “unprecedented attack” on US democracy.
Garland said the Department of Justice has charged more than 725 defendants in relation to the riot. The severest charges have been reserved for people accused of assaulting police officers and of being involved in planning to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory, he said.
Many have commented on the anniversary and the presidential speeches taking stands from their own personal opinion. SEB therefore at this point brings you screen shots and much more of these comments gotten from the a variety of social media platforms:
Tephen Johnson
"At some point, a major news
network (i.e. not Fox), should just let Donald come on, just him, and present
all the evidence he claims to have that the election was rigged. Give him one
full hour to present whatever he has, with actual evidence."
Ritter Butzke
This looks a bit like a distraction to
rally the bases from the fact that this administration has the biggest inflation
of 40 years, unemployment, Afghanistan debacle, supply chain broken, empty
shelves, and the VP with the lowest approval rate ever (below 30) in USA, and a
President with an approval rate at 38, with states flipping red in the
midterm’s.
Usually the midterms are always bad for
the party in power, but he is about to lose the House with insane numbers.
This administration already lost the
independents, and many blue voter’s start to wonder if this is what they want.
The Sherman Underground - Hocus ~ *
Although there are some stark
differences between the two parties even more so with the economic divide we
now have. The people should know when they are being manipulated by either and
that perhaps is the biggest tragedy here....The gullible and easily led
astray...Go to prison The people that gave them the order to terrify and
threatened the opposition leaders in the Capital...🤷🏻♂️-Watching the whole
scene unfold on television from the comfort and safety of his station in life
giving his top antagonists a Presidential Pardon before they have even had a
trile in a court of law...Incredable
Michael Broderick
Spoken from a guy who 4 days ago said
"Let's hope 2020 will be a great year".
Floda Reltih
Beautiful sight - Pelosi
Deborah Donaldson
No matter what. It is wrong to slam a
former President from a sitting President 🤯
R Verhoeks
How do you unite with people who want
only to divide?
Ermias Ararsa
You love to watch the "let's go
Brandon" and "Don't look up" fights🤣 as if Trump and Biden are worth the
fight. One is a mobster and the other incompetent. While Americans are fighting
over their pronouns, the Chinese are slapping them left to right economically
and in every other aspect you could think of. Damn America. You truly have
become a 🤣.
Cannon
I love this presenter's voice
Dragchute86
Let's go Brandon!
Adrian H. Dragan
Peace brothers peace.
Former US President Obama says some
Republicans have “embraced” the claims that “fanned the flames of violence” on
Jan. 6.
“We can’t set an example when our own leaders are willing to fabricate lies sand cast doubt on the results of free and fair elections.”
ABC News in photo snippets captures some of the reactions on the situation:
See also a television programme analysis on the anniversary, curtsey of DW News
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