One year after the assault on the Capitol | Biden points to Trump’s “special responsibility”

(Washington) Has Joe Biden decided to attack Donald Trump more head-on? The US president, in his speech Thursday to commemorate the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, will denounce the “special responsibility” of his predecessor in this “chaos”, his spokesman 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.

Buffalo horns

Another sign of the firmness of the Biden administration: its attorney general Merrick Garland promised Wednesday that all participants in the assault would be prosecuted “whatever their status”.

The protester with the buffalo horns, a young man who admitted to having stolen a beer in the office of the democratic leader Nancy Pelosi… More than 725 supporters of Donald Trump who had entered the seat of Congress have already been arrested. Many others have seen the FBI come to their doorstep.

At the same time, a parliamentary commission is investigating to understand the precise role of Donald Trump and his entourage in the organization of the assault. She launches summonses to appear in a burst to increase, little by little, the pressure on the former president.

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.

Two elected officials very close to the former president also planned to hold a press conference on Thursday to, they say, bring the “Republicans’ response” to the commemorations.

But in this party, over which the former president retains an immense ascendancy, the elected officials have however generally chosen to keep a low profile.

Mitch McConnell, a tenor of the Republican camp and the leader of the Conservatives in the Senate, who a few days after the assault had accused Donald Trump of having “incited” the crowd to march on Congress, has already made it known that he would not be not present at the commemorations organized in Washington, ensuring to participate in a funeral in the southern United States.

Far from the Capitol where members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are invited to gather together Thursday, at 5.30 p.m.

Many elected Republicans have no trouble denouncing the assault, but also accuse the Democratic camp of using the events of January 6 “as a partisan weapon” to divide the country.

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, ”Senate Democrat boss Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday. “If we do not address the root causes of the violence of January 6,” he warns, “this insurgency will soon no longer be an aberration. It could well become the norm ”.