President-elect Joe Biden blamed Donald Trump for the mob violence inside the U.S. Capitol.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday denounced the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorists,” and he blamed President Donald Trump for the violence that has shaken the nation’s capital and beyond.

The riot by Trump supporters who breached the security of Congress on Wednesday was “not dissent, was not disorder, was not protest. It was chaos.”

Those who massed on Capitol Hill intending to disrupt a joint session of Congress that was certifying Biden’s election victory over Trump “weren’t protesters. Don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob — insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It’s that basic,” Biden said.

Biden said the actions Trump has taken to subvert the nation’s democratic institutions throughout his presidency led directly to the mayhem in Washington.

“In the past four years, we’ve had a president who’s made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done,” Biden said.

The mob of hundreds of Trump backers broke into the Capitol and roamed the halls looking for lawmakers, who were forced to halt their deliberations and seek safety. The violent protesters were egged on by Trump himself.

Biden ticked off a list of Trump’s assaults on American norms, including his attacks on the press and the intelligence community and his pressure on state and federal officials and judges to submit to his efforts to overturn the election.

Biden said that on Wednesday, Trump tried to “use a mob to silence the voices of nearly 160 million Americans” who voted in November.

And he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris spoke about the police treatment of the largely white protesters on Wednesday, compared with the heavy-handed way in which police have handled Black Lives Matter protests.

He expressed hope that images comparing the police presence Wednesday to that marshaled to prepare for Black Lives Matters protests would open Americans’ eyes to the needs for reform.