Trump imitates Biden and avoids mentioning January 6 third anniversary | US News
Trump held a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, on Friday a couple hours after Biden delivered a campaign speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, deriding his predecessor for his role in the deadly insurrection.
In a nearly two-hour-long speech, Trump uttered the words ‘insurrection’ and ‘J6’, but did not directly address the anniversary on Saturday.
Trump took aim at Biden, saying his successor in Pennsylvania stuttered through labeling him a threat to democracy.
‘Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing. “He’s a threat to democracy.” They’re weaponizing government. “He’s a threat to democracy”… Wow,’ said Trump.
He added that Biden ‘couldn’t read the words’ or pronounce ‘democracy’, and did his own impersonation of the president, drawing a reaction from his fans.
Trump also imitated Biden not being able to find the exit route after a speech, claiming, ‘he can’t walk off the stage’.
Beside straying away from discussing the third anniversary of the January 6, Trump made only brief mentions of issues related to it. Trump said his enemies have say he ‘incited an insurrection’, that ‘J6 had the biggest crowd’ and that ‘nobody’s been treated so badly in history’ than the insurrectionists who were arrested and charged.
Trump made the focus of his rally ripping his enemies and urging his supporters to vote for him in the Iowa Caucus on January 15.
In a shorter speech in the mid-afternoon, Biden delivered a scathing attack against Trump while likening his own campaign for reelection to General George Washington leading troops to victory in the Revolutionary War.
Biden warned that Trump intends to launch an ‘assault on democracy’ that ‘isn’t just part of his past’ but rather ‘what he’s promising in the future’.
‘His first rally for the 2024 campaign opened with a choir of January 6 insurrectionists singing from prison on cellphone, while images of the January 6 riot playing on the big screen behind him at his rally,’ said Biden.
‘Can you believe that? This was like something out of a fairy tale – a bad fairy tale.’
Biden said that Trump exhausted all legal avenues to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
‘But the legal path just took Trump back to the truth that I’d won the election and he was a loser,’ he said.
Biden continued that more than 140 police officers were injured on January 6, 2021, and some died ‘because of Donald Trump’s lies’ that ‘brought a mob to Washington’.
Since that day, more than 1,200 individuals have been charged for an assault on the Capitol and nearly 900 have been convicted or plead guilty.
‘What’s Trump done? Instead of calling them criminals, he’s called these insurrectionists patriots… and he promised to pardon them if he returned to office,’ Biden said. ‘Trump said that there was a lot of love on January 6. The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence.’
Biden said that Trump’s campaign ‘is about him’ and ‘not America, not you’.
‘Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past. Not the future,’ he said. ‘He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power.’
The president added that Trump ‘tried to rewrite the facts of January 6’ and is ‘trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election’.
‘Trump is running as the denier-in-chief, the election denier-in-chief. Once again, he’s saying he won’t honor the results of the election if he lose,’ Biden said. ‘He still doesn’t understand the basic truth and that is, you can’t love your country only when you win.’
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