VALLEY FORGE, Pennsylvania: President Joe Biden warned Friday that Donald Trump’s efforts to retake the White House in 2024 pose a grave threat to the country, the day before the third anniversary of the violent riot at the US Capitol by then-President Trump’s supporters aiming to keep him in power.
Speaking near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago, Biden said that Jan. 6 2021, marked a moment where “we nearly lost America — lost it all.” He said the presidential race — a likely rematch with Trump, who is the far and away GOP frontrunner — is “all about” whether American democracy will survive.
The speech, the president’s first political event of the election year, was intended to clarify the expected choice for voters this fall. Biden, who reentered political life because he felt he was best capable of defeating Trump in 2020, believes focusing on defending democracy to be central for persuading voters to reject Trump once again.
“We all know who Donald Trump is,” Biden said. “The question we have to answer is who are we?”
Biden, laid out Trump’s role in the Capitol attack, as a mob of the Republican’s supporters overran the building while lawmakers were counting Electoral College votes that certified Democrat Biden’s win. More than 100 police officers were bloodied, beaten and attacked by the rioters who overwhelmed authorities to break into the building.
“What’s Trump done? He’s called these insurrectionists ‘patriots,’” Biden said, “and he promised to pardon them if he returns to office.” He excoriated Trump for “glorifying” rather than condemning political violence
At least nine people who were at the Capitol that day died during or after the rioting, including several officers who died of suicide, a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber, and three other Trump supporters who authorities said suffered medical emergencies.
Biden said that by “trying to rewrite the facts of Jan. 6, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election.”
Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of his chief rival.
“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him,” Biden said, saying it was Trump’s aim to get retribution on his political enemies. “Not America. Not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future.”
He added: “There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do.”
Before his remarks, Biden, joined by his wife Jill, participated in a wreath laying ceremony at Valley Forge National Arch, which honors the troops who camped there from December 1777 to June 1778. He also toured the home that served as Washington’s headquarters.
Biden invoked Washington’s decision to resign his commission as the leader of the Continental Army after American independence was won — and the painting commemorating that moment that resides in the Capitol Rotunda — to cast Trump as unworthy of Washington’s legacy.
“He could have held onto that power as long as he wanted,” Biden said of Washington. “But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops of Valley Forge had fought for. In America, our leaders don’t hold on to power relentlessly. Our leaders return power to the people – willingly.”
Although the chaos of Jan. 6 came down on members of both political parties, it is being remembered in a largely polarized fashion now, like other aspects of political life in a divided country.
In the days after the attack, 52 percent of US adults said Trump bore a lot of responsibility for Jan. 6, according to the Pew Research Center. By early 2022, that had declined to 43 percent. The number of Americans who said Trump bore no responsibility increased from 24 percent in 2021 to 32 percent in 2022.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released this week found that about 7 in 10 Republicans say too much is being made of the attack. Just 18 percent of GOP supporters say that protesters who entered the Capitol were “mostly violent,” down from 26 percent in 2021, while 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents say the protesters were mostly violent, essentially unchanged from 2021.
Biden said that “politics, fear, money” have led many Republicans to abandon their criticism of Trump after the Jan. 6 attack.
“These MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and Jan. 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy,” Biden said. “They’ve made their choice. Now the rest of us – Democrats, Independents, mainstream Republicans – we have to make our choice. I know mine. And I believe I know America’s.”
Biden has frequently invoked the dangers of Jan. 6 since his 2021 inauguration on the same Capitol steps where police officers were struggling to battle back rioters just two weeks earlier. On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, Biden had stood in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, a historic spot where the House of Representatives used to meet before the Civil War. On Jan. 6, rioters filled the area, some looking for lawmakers who had run for cover.
“They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people,” Biden said of the rioters. “They were looking to deny the will of the people.”
On the second anniversary, Biden presented the nation’s second highest civilian award to 12 people who were involved in defending the Capitol during the attack.
Friday’s appearance included supporters and young people motivated by the attack to get involved in politics, campaign advisers said.
President Joe Biden lambastes Trump for Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a day ‘we nearly lost America’
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President Joe Biden lambastes Trump for Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a day ‘we nearly lost America’
- Biden kickstarts campaign as Trump continues to lead race for Republican Party nomination
- Warns that Trump’s efforts to return to power in 2024 pose a grave threat to the nation
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
