Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 19
US News: Commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, President Joe Biden called on Americans to be proud that democracy withstood the attack, but urged them not to forget what actually happened.
“We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago,” he wrote in a Sunday op-ed for The Washington Post.
Lawmakers gathered in Washington Monday to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election.
In his piece, Biden celebrated what was widely expected to be a peaceful process, while reminding readers of the violence that took place during the same event four years earlier. He riticised Trump and the Republicans, without naming them, for attempting to rewrite history and “tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes.”
Shortly after Trump’s speech on the Ellipse four years ago, an angry mob of supporters breached a police barricade and stormed the Capitol.
Over 140 police officers were assaulted, the Capitol was vandalized, government property was
stolen and destroyed and a joint session of Congress in the process of affirming the 2020 presidential election results was disrupted.
Biden’s comments are in stark contrast to Trump’s, who routinely downplays the violence that occurred during the riot and refuses to acknowledge his 2020 presidential loss to Biden, often calling it a “rigged election.” Trump has referred to those charged as “hostages,” “captives” and “political prisoners” and has said he would pardon most of those convicted of crimes on that day.
