President Joe Biden (left) called ex-President Donald Trump (right) a ‘loser’ and Trump attacked him hours later in his own campaign speech (Pictures: EPA/AP)
Ex-President Donald Trump avoided mentioning the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot and mocked President Joe Biden, who called him a ‘loser’ in a speech hours earlier.
Trump held a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, on Friday a couple hours after Biden delivered a campaign speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, deriding his predecessor for his role in the deadly insurrection.
In a nearly two-hour-long speech, Trump uttered the words ‘insurrection’ and ‘J6’, but did not directly address the anniversary on Saturday.
Trump took aim at Biden, saying his successor in Pennsylvania stuttered through labeling him a threat to democracy.
‘Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing. “He’s a threat to democracy.” They’re weaponizing government. “He’s a threat to democracy”… Wow,’ said Trump.
He added that Biden ‘couldn’t read the words’ or pronounce ‘democracy’, and did his own impersonation of the president, drawing a reaction from his fans.
Trump also imitated Biden not being able to find the exit route after a speech, claiming, ‘he can’t walk off the stage’.
Beside straying away from discussing the third anniversary of the January 6, Trump made only brief mentions of issues related to it. Trump said his enemies have say he ‘incited an insurrection’ and that ‘J6 had the biggest crowd’ and that ‘nobody’s been treated so badly in the history of’ the US than the insurrectionists who were arrested and charged.
Trump made the focus of his rally ripping his enemies and urging his supporters to vote in the Iowa Caucus on January 15.
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In a shorter speech in the mid-afternoon, Biden delivered a scathing attack against Trump while likening his campaign for reelection to General George Washington leading his troops to victory in the Revolutionary War.
Biden warned that Trump intends to launch an ‘assault on democracy’ that ‘isn’t just part of his past’ but rather ‘what he’s promising in the future’.
‘His first rally for the 2024 campaign opened with a choir of January 6 insurrectionists singing from prison on cellphone, while images of the January 6 riot playing on the big screen behind him at his rally,’ said Biden.
‘Can you believe that? This was like something out of a fairy tale – a bad fairy tale.’
Biden said that Trump exhausted all legal avenues to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
‘But the legal path just took Trump back to the truth that I’d won the election and he was a loser,’ he said.
Biden continued that more than 140 police officers were injured on January 6, 2021, and some died ‘because of Donald Trump’s lies’ that ‘brought a mob to Washington’.
Since that day, more than 1,200 individuals have been charged for an assault on the Capitol and nearly 900 have been convicted or plead guilty.
‘What’s Trump done? Instead of calling them criminals, he’s called these insurrectionists patriots… and he promised to pardon them if he returned to office,’ Biden said. ‘Trump said that there was a lot of love on January 6. The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence.’
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Ex-President Donald Trump on the eve of January 6 Capitol riot third anniversary mocked President Joe Biden, who called him a ‘loser’.