(Washington) The clash from a distance with Joe Biden will not take place: former President Donald Trump did an about-face on Tuesday and gives up giving a press conference on Thursday, exactly one year after his assault on Capitol Hill. supporters.
In a statement released Tuesday, the Republican assures us that he will speak on January 15, in a meeting in Arizona.
He protests again against the “fraud” which according to him, and without him providing any proof, marred the last presidential election won by Joe Biden. “The crime of the century! », Writes Donald Trump, whom his Democratic opponent has beaten by 7 million votes.
The ex-businessman does not provide a clear explanation for the cancellation of the press conference he planned to hold his luxurious residence in Florida.
He says he is giving up “in the light” of the “partial and dishonest” parliamentary commission which is investigating his role and that of his relatives in this attack which traumatized America.
The Republican also charges the media “Fake News”, one of his favorite targets.
The announcement of this event, which would have coincided with a moment of meditation by the US Congress in Washington, had been received as yet another provocation by the critics of the former president.
But the prospect of this speech also seemed to embarrass the Republican camp, on which Donald Trump nevertheless has an immense influence. The majority of supporters of the conservative party indeed adhere to the thesis of the “theft” of the last presidential election that it is peddling.
“Trump’s behavior is arguably unprecedented in American history. No former president has so tried to discredit his successor and the democratic process, ”said Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond.
Joe Biden’s speech
Donald Trump’s about-face leaves the way open to Joe Biden, who will speak Thursday from the Capitol, where thousands of supporters of his Republican opponent tried to prevent Congress from certifying his election .
PHOTO EVAN VUCCI, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Joe Biden, President of the United States
“He will talk about the work that remains to be done to ensure and strengthen our democracy and our institutions, to reject the hatred and lies that we saw on January 6, to unite the country,” his spokesperson, Jen said on Tuesday. Psaki.
Since his election, Joe Biden seems reluctant to attack the “other guy” or “the guy from before” – the formulations used by the president and by the White House especially not to name the one that, perhaps, it will be necessary to face again in the presidential election of 2024.
Officially, Joe Biden intends to represent himself, and the Republican, he suggests that he is thinking about it.
According to Lara Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University, “the president and vice president [Kamala] Harris can’t go on this “direct verbal attack” ground because they don’t want to give the impression of an orchestrated ‘witch hunt’ “from the White House, to use a phrase dear to Donald. Trump.
“Naivety”
“The Biden administration thought that by making good political decisions, all of this would go away, but I think that is naivety,” she adds.
According to Joe Biden, the best way to counter Donald Trump would be to reconcile the American middle class with representative democracy, by guaranteeing it jobs, purchasing power and a certain serenity in the face of globalization.
But the increasingly unpopular president is struggling to produce the results hoped for: the United States is suffering with immense weariness a new wave of the pandemic, his major social reforms are blocked in Congress, the cost of living is increasing …
Rachel Bitecofer, a strategist close to the Democratic camp, thinks Joe Biden should face the former businessman and the Republican Party more harshly.
Faced with a Donald Trump who has just supported, in a press release, the ultra-conservative Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, “we must be very frank about what that means”, she judges.
It is, according to Rachel Bitecofer, a way for the former president “to signal what he wants for America and it is not a democratic future”.
But, she laments, “there is a real reluctance to admit how virulent the right-wing attack on democracy is”.
“The current threats against democracy are real and worrying,” Judge Carl Tobias. He believes, however, that “the United States overcame much more dangerous crises, in particular the Civil War.”