Joe Biden explains it clearly
President Joe Biden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol instigated by his predecessor, reminded the nation of the horror of the insurrection while making clear the violence was only the final act in a failed coup attempt, not its entirety. More important, he reiterated a call to move away from the MAGA movement’s cult of violence, lies and authoritarianism.
How did Biden do? His speech was among his strongest to date in tone, delivery and substance. It placed him, as he put it, “in the breach” to protect democracy. Biden put aside the notion that ignoring his predecessor was a way to deny Trump attention. Instead, he was more blunt than ever. Trump was a “loser” and a “defeated former president” who could not accept that he lost, Biden said. He faulted the former president for spreading a “web of lies” and correctly traced the attempt to overthrow democracy to his efforts even before the election to undermine its legitimacy.
That Biden was compelled to ask his fellow Americans to close their eyes and recall the events of Jan. 6 is a measure of how far the GOP has gone in lying and distorting history. Similarly, it was commentary on the extent of the “big lie” that Biden had to take the time to reiterate that courts rejected every claim of fraud, that every audit confirmed the election results and that every winning Republican accepted the legitimacy of their own elections (despite appearing on the same ballot as Trump). In a simple but effective phrase, he said, “You can’t love your country only when you win.”
Biden also prodded Republicans to stop enabling the former president and his lies. “They seem no longer to want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes,” he noted, even as he extended a hand to work with them to solve the country’s problems.
Biden’s emphatic stance that he will not interfere with prosecutorial decisions meant he had to highlight the defeated Trump’s responsibility for the events that unfolded without appearing to direct the Justice Department to go after Trump. He did so by avoiding legal terminology and focusing on truth-telling, not legal allegations.
He also raised the discussion to a more philosophical level, asking, “Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?” And he was frank in posing the choice between truth and lies. “The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it,” he said.
Biden is not regarded as an adept speaker, but this speech was everything that presidential oratory should be: focused, resolute, unstinting in candor and high-minded. The question remains whether it will be sufficient to remind Americans that we truly are in a battle between truth and lies, democracy and rule of the mob. But no one can fault Biden as shirking his obligation as president to defend the Constitution.