'It's bizarre': Biden slams Trump's description of Capitol rioters as a 'loving crowd'

‘We just have to keep making the case just as the Republican Party today offers nothing but fear, lies and broken promises,’ says President Biden in speech

Clara Hill
Saturday 24 July 2021 13:32 BST
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President Joe Biden made a speech calling out the Republican party for their inability to act about the 6 January insurrection

President Joe Biden has labelled former President Donald Trump’s remarks about the Capitol insurrection “bizarre”.

Mr Biden said this during a campaign rally for Terry McAuliffe, who is seeking the governorship in Virginia again after leaving office in 2018.

Mr Biden told the crowd, “We just have to keep making the case just as the Republican Party today offers nothing but fear, lies and broken promises."

“When you think about, turning on the television every day and seeing the replay of what happened on January 6 and saying it was a lot of wonderful peaceful people. ... It is bizarre.”

These comments come after recently released audio by the Washington Post of an interview with the former president in which he called the crowd “loving”.

“We have to keep cutting through the Republican fog,” Mr Biden said at the 23 July rally.

Mr Trump is not the only Republican official to downplay the events on 6 January. Many figures within the party have sough to minimise the attack on the Capitol.

For example, Rep Andrew Clyde said that the video from that day could be seen as a “normal tourist visit”. Senator Ron Johnson said the group “didn’t seem like a violent mob to me”.

Mr Biden said that the United States is “the most unique country in the history of the world” for what bound Americans together was not religion, ethnicity or any other traditional mark of nationhood, but rather it was “based on the proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women and men are created equal, endowed by their creator certain inalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness”.

Mr Biden is not the only senior Democrat to voice his concern about the leadership’s views and actions on the 6 January. For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the unprecedented decision to veto House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s selections for the House Committee tasked with investigating it.

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