(Washington) Has Joe Biden decided to attack Donald Trump more head-on? The American president, in the speech he is due to deliver on Thursday to commemorate the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, will denounce the “special responsibility” of his predecessor in this “chaos”, his spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Joe Biden “sees January 6 as the tragic crowning achievement of what four years of Trump’s presidency has done to this country,” said Jen Psaki.
The spokeswoman for the US executive told reporters to expect “President Biden to expose the scope of what happened on Capitol Hill and President Trump’s particular responsibility in the chaos.”
The Democratic president is due to speak on Capitol Hill itself, where thousands of his rival’s supporters have tried to prevent his election from being certified by the US Congress.
He will “forcefully denounce the lie propagated by the former president”, who claims against all evidence to have won the ballot, said Jen Psaki.
It is a clear hardening of tone on the part of the White House which usually is reluctant even to name Donald Trump, designated by the American executive or by Joe Biden himself as “the other type” or “the guys from before ”.
Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who took office after the attack, admitted Wednesday before a Senate committee that January 6 had “brought to light very significant operational failures.”
“These issues need to be addressed, and that is what we are doing,” he pledged.
According to a poll released Wednesday by the Axios news site, about 57% of Americans believe that events such as those of January 6, 2021 are likely to recur in the years to come.
The same opinion poll confirms how divided America remains, a year after the incredible images of clashes in front of the Capitol and supporters of Donald Trump parading inside this emblematic building of American democracy.
According to this poll, only 55% of Americans believe that Joe Biden is the legitimate winner of the last election.
“January 6 was not the thoughtless and spontaneous action of a violent crowd. It was an attempt to violently overthrow the outcome of a free and fair election. Let’s not get lost: the reasons that caused January 6 still exist, ”Senate Democrats boss Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday.
Trump’s flip-flop
Donald Trump certainly did an about-face: he gave up giving a press conference on Thursday since his luxurious retirement from Florida, an initiative that had been seen as a provocation among the Democrats and which visibly embarrassed his Republican supporters.
But the irascible billionaire did not soften his point in any way. In a press release Tuesday, he again protested against the “fraud” which he said, and without him providing any proof, marred the last presidential election. “The crime of the century! »Wrote Donald Trump, who was ahead of his Democratic opponent by seven million votes.
Republicans, over whom the former president retains immense influence, have generally chosen to keep a low profile.
In a message dated January 2, their leader in the House of Representatives – which, along with the Senate, makes up the US Congress – admittedly wrote that “the actions of that day (January 6) were illegal.”
But Kevin McCarthy also criticizes the Democratic camp, which according to him uses the events of January 6 “as a partisan weapon to divide the country”.
Mitch McConnell, a tenor of the Republican camp and the leader of the Conservatives in the Senate, has already indicated that he will not be present Thursday during the commemorations organized in Washington. He will attend the funeral of a former US senator in Atlanta, in the southern United States.
Far from the steps of the Capitol, where members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are invited to gather together Thursday, at 5.30 p.m.