Donald Trump on Thursday angrily hit back at Joe Biden on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot, repeating his claims that the 2020 election was “rigged’ after the US president assailed his predecessor as a dangerous threat to American democracy.
In a series of statements, Trump used Biden’s own language from his January 6 anniversary speech, accusing the veteran Democrat of a “web of lies” and again alleging the November 2020 election won by Biden was in fact stolen from him.
Trump said it was Biden, and not himself, who sought to prevent a “peaceful transfer” of presidential power a year ago when thousands of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol claiming Biden’s election victory was fraudulent.
“They spread a ‘web of lies about me and Russia for four years to try to overturn the 2016 election, and now they lie about how they interfered in the 2020 election, too,” Trump said.
“Never forget the crime of the 2020 Presidential Election. Never give up!”.
Trump’s statements came after Biden, in a forceful speech inside the Capitol marking the anniversary of the 2021 assault, said the former president was a threat to democracy.
“The lies that drove the anger and madness we saw in this place, they have not abated,” Biden said, alluding to Trump’s claims about the election.
“I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy,” he said, without ever saying Trump’s name directly, only calling him the “former president.”
Trump though accused Biden of “political theater” and repeated his charge — unsupported by any evidence released to date — that the 2020 vote count in key states like Georgia and Arizona was fraudulent, cheating him of a second term.
Biden “used my name today to try to further divide America,” Trump said.
“This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed,” Trump said.
Trump, who earlier this week cancelled a press conference planned for Thursday, repeated his claim that the election was “rigged.”
“Just look at the numbers, they speak for themselves,” the former president said.
“They are not justifiable, so the complicit media just calls it the Big Lie, when in actuality the Big Lie was the Election itself.”
Trump’s claims of fraudulent voting and vote counts have repeatedly been rejected by the states in question, the Justice Department, and US courts.
