President Joe Biden commemorated the one-year anniversary of the deadly Capitol riot Thursday, taking aim at former President Donald Trump’s “web of lies” and reminding the American people that Trump lost the 2020 election, no matter what the Republican may claim.
“For the first time in our history, a president not just lost an election; he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob reached the Capitol,” Biden said, explaining what happened on Jan. 6, 2020, when supporters of Trump breached the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral win.
Biden accused Trump of “doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives were at risk, the nation’s Capitol under siege.”
He went on to urge Americans to “face up to” the truth, saying, “We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie and here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interest — than America’s interest.”
Trump was scheduled to hold a press conference of his own on Thursday, but canceled it earlier this week after Sen. Lindsey Graham and Fox News host Laura Ingraham questioned the optics.
When he postponed his statement, Trump blamed “the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans, and the Fake News Media.”
Watch a clip of Biden’s comments in the video above.