Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to speak from inside the Capitol. (File)
Washington:
A divided nation will experience an ominous moment of division on Thursday as President Joe Biden uses the anniversary of the January 6 attack on Congress to warn of threats to the populace. US owner and Donald Trump live with his conspiracy theories.
A year after a mob of Trump supporters marched in Congress to try to stop lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory in the presidential election, political wounds are still far from healed.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to speak from inside the Capitol, set in a time of uncertainty with near-unbelievable scenes as Trump supporters battle police in the past to invaded the heart of American democracy.
A veteran politician about to retire to take on what he sees as Trump’s autocratic presidency, Biden often warned during his first year in the White House of an “existential” threat to political parties. political freedoms that by far most Americans have despised.
His speech – part of a string of events that Biden’s key ally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said would be a “tough day” – was set to take that warning to the next level. new high.
But while Congress is holding a vigil for what Biden called a “dark time,” Trump will hold a news conference from his luxury residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
His message is also predictable. Despite losing to Biden by more than seven million votes and despite losing multiple times in courts across the country, Trump continues to make extravagant claims that the 2020 election has been stolen.
And the accusations are just the thorniest element of a larger-scale attack on Biden on everything from immigration to Covid-19, all adding to what looks like an effort. unannounced to regain power in 2024.
It was a campaign that Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, called “unprecedented in American history.”
“No former president has tried to do so much to discredit his successor and the democratic process,” Tobias said.
– What can Biden do? –
However ridiculous the election conspiracy theory can be – a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled Trump’s case is “tense” and “speculative” – it is viewed by millions of Americans as a fraud. real.
Polls consistently show that about 70% of Republicans think Biden was illegally elected.
A new poll by the Washington Post-University of Maryland puts the number at 58 percent. However, that same poll found that 40 percent of Republicans, compared with 23 percent of Democrats, believe that violence against the government is sometimes justifiable.
Against what Trump, the master gallantry, is popularly known as “The Thief,” has become a political ideology in its own right, with nearly every Republican legislator either trying to avoid criticizing what happened on January 6th – or actively defend the attack.
Lara Brown, director of the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, says it’s a mix of politically savvy people looking to see Trump’s good books and the vast majority of voters who don’t believe what they are. they say is a considerable force.
“The very scary thing about our current position is that not only are these elite attacks, but they are being driven by a grassroots movement,” she said.
“It’s not just far-right groups that have organized” on January 6, she said. “On average, everyday Americans have embraced this whole concept.”
It is unclear, if anything, what Biden can do to change these dynamics.
Democratic political scientist and pollster Rachel Bitecofer has urged Biden to confront Trump more forcefully, rather than pretending that the man Press Secretary Jen Psaki called “the ex” is not even more important.
Biden “is not commemorating an event that has ended. He is commemorating an event that is ongoing and at risk of getting worse,” she said.
“There’s a real hesitancy to accept how damaging rights are after democracy is here.”
However, Brown says Biden has little room to maneuver, because a direct attack on Trump risks looking like a “political witch hunt” – exactly what the former president claimed in his statement. his conspiracy theories.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
.
