Ignoring Trump Didn’t Work. Biden Goes After ‘a Defeated Former President.’ / Right-wing media criticized Biden’s speech and played down the Jan. 6 anniversary.

 

NEWS ANALYSIS

Ignoring Trump Didn’t Work. Biden Goes After ‘a Defeated Former President.’

 

In a speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol riot, the president confronted Trumpism, even as he refused to utter his predecessor’s name.

 

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Jan. 6, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/us/politics/biden-trump-jan-6.html

 

WASHINGTON — For most of his first year in office, President Biden has bet that he could move the country past the divisiveness of his predecessor by restoring a sense of normalcy to the White House, practicing the traditional brand of politics he learned over decades in the Senate and as vice president — and largely ignoring the man he refers to as “the former guy.”

 

It didn’t work.

 

So on Thursday, Mr. Biden put aside his hopes of no longer having to engage directly with Donald J. Trump and went aggressively at him, using an impassioned speech in the Capitol to make clear the urgent necessity of confronting Mr. Trump — and Trumpism.

 

“We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the house, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said from National Statuary Hall.

 

“What did we not see?” he continued. “We didn’t see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation’s capitol under siege.”

 

Later, Mr. Biden was even more blunt, even as he refused to utter Mr. Trump’s name. “He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext, to cover for the truth,” he said of Mr. Trump’s lies about election fraud. “He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.”

 

The extraordinary moment, in which a sitting president accused his predecessor of holding “a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy,” marked a sharp pivot in Mr. Biden’s strategy for dealing with Mr. Trump and his continuing promotion of the baseless assertion that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.

 

The president’s speech tacitly acknowledged that his predecessor, far from fading away, remains the most potent force in Republican politics and a credible rival to Mr. Biden in 2024. And for Mr. Biden, who throughout the last year has articulated the importance of promoting democracy over autocracy around the world, it also signaled his willingness to confront more directly the challenges Mr. Trump poses to democratic values at home, which have shown little sign of dissipating in the year since a violent mob tried to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s election victory.

 

The approach has its risks, not least in providing Mr. Trump with better opportunities to hit Mr. Biden with broadsides of his own — an opening that Mr. Trump seized on Thursday with a series of angry statements accusing the president of supporting “open borders,” “unconstitutional mandates” and “corrupt elections.”

 

But continuing to ignore his predecessor carries real peril for Mr. Biden as well. Recent polling suggests that millions of Americans are at least somewhat willing to tolerate or support political violence against partisan opponents.

 

Republican-controlled states are considering or enacting restrictions on voting rights. Supporters of Mr. Trump are seeking to control the machinery of elections in key states, potentially giving them the power to block an outcome they oppose. Substantial majorities of Republicans in polls say they believe the results of the 2020 election were illegitimate.

 

Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party remains strong — he is trying to be its de facto kingmaker and he is polling as its front-runner for the 2024 presidential election. His false statements on election fraud continue to divide Americans.

 

Last month, the two presidents shared a rare occurrence: commending each other. In an effort to address vaccine hesitancy among many Trump supporters — unvaccinated Americans are disproportionally Republican — Mr. Biden praised the previous administration’s work on coronavirus vaccines, prompting Mr. Trump to express gratitude.

 

Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol and has even criticized Mr. Trump by name on a few occasions. Yet before Thursday, he had never as president taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods, or the Republicans who have enabled him.

 

“He values power over principle,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “Because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interest, and America’s interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution.”

 

Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, said returning to a contentious tit-for-tat would only alienate Trump supporters the administration was hoping to vaccinate.

 

“We can save millions of lives globally, but when we tear each other apart like we did on Jan. 6, the damage can be irreparable,” Mr. Luntz said.

 

It was not clear whether Mr. Biden’s willingness to take on Mr. Trump so directly signaled a lasting shift in messaging or a one-off driven by the exigencies of the anniversary. Mr. Biden was described as deeply involved in the preparation of the speech and determined to make sure that it took on not just the mob but the former president who inspired it.

 

At the same time, however, Mr. Biden wanted to avoid signaling that he had given up on bipartisanship altogether and gave himself a rhetorical escape hatch by including a line declaring that he “will always seek to work together” with those Republicans “who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man.”

 

The House investigation. A select committee is scrutinizing the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which occurred as Congress met to formalize Joe Biden’s election victory amid various efforts to overturn the results. Here are some people being examined by the panel:

 

Donald Trump. The former president’s movement and communications on Jan. 6 appear to be a focus of the inquiry. But Mr. Trump has attempted to shield his records, invoking executive privilege. The dispute is making its way through the courts.

 

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his role in the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

 

Scott Perry and Jim Jordan. The Republican representatives of Pennsylvania and Ohio are among a group of G.O.P. congressmen who were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the election. Mr. Perry has refused to meet with the panel.

 

Phil Waldron. The retired Army colonel has been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint document he circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mr. Meadows. The document contained extreme plans to overturn the election.

 

Fox News anchors. ​​Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade texted Mr. Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to persuade Mr. Trump to make an effort to stop it. The texts were part of the material that Mr. Meadows had turned over to the panel.

 

Steve Bannon. The former Trump aide has been charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena, claiming protection under executive privilege even though he was an outside adviser. His trial is scheduled for next summer.

 

Michael Flynn. Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuit to block the panel’s subpoenas.

 

Jeffrey Clark. The little-known official repeatedly pushed his colleagues at the Justice Department to help Mr. Trump undo his loss. The panel has recommended that Mr. Clark be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate.

 

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutiny since writing a memo that laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotel that has become a prime focus of the panel.

 

But the overall aggressive posture of the speech was a shift in the administration’s approach. Last month, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, when pressed on why the administration did not respond to Mr. Trump’s falsehoods more often, said the administration had decided that “elevating and giving more fire to the conspiracy theory-laden arguments of the former president isn’t constructive, nor is it what the American people elected him to do.”

 

Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush and a Republican, said the shift by Mr. Biden was necessary because Mr. Trump’s false statements about the 2020 election and the assault on the Capitol amounted to a national security threat. The F.B.I. and the Homeland Security Department have issued multiple assessments concluding that such misinformation has emboldened domestic extremists to commit violence.

 

“Given Trump’s ego, it’s absolutely appropriate to look him in the eye and say, ‘I know what you did, it’s not appropriate and it’s not going to happen again,’” Mr. Chertoff said. “It was necessary for the president to show I am not shrinking from calling out what is going on.”

 

David Axelrod, a former top adviser to former President Barack Obama, said Mr. Biden should maintain the same tone in the future regarding Mr. Trump.

 

“Going after Trump, who remains deeply unpopular outside his base, could be smart politics, especially if it draws him back into the fray,” Mr. Axelrod said, adding that there was a need to confront the ideology that fueled the attack on the Capitol. “Hard to take that on without confronting the author and chief purveyor of the lie.”

 

Even as Mr. Biden confronted Mr. Trump, there is little sign the address will change the behavior of Republicans beholden to the former president and reluctant to cooperate with Mr. Biden.

 

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, said in the days after the riot that Mr. Trump “bears responsibility” for the violence, only to later travel to Mar-a-Lago to preserve his relationship with the former president. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, has been more forceful in his condemnations of the former president, but some longtime conservatives are showing increasing anxiety over Mr. Trump’s continued grip on the party.

 

Karl Rove, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, criticized “Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol” in an opinion piece this week in The Wall Street Journal.

 

Mr. Biden, with a slim majority in Congress, is struggling to unite his party behind his priorities: advancing a climate and social-spending package bill, as well as federal voting rights legislation. The president’s approval ratings have been low, in part because of rising inflation and the pandemic, making the passage of his agenda even more crucial ahead of the midterm elections.

 

Pressed by reporters after his address over whether his remarks would only deepen divisions in America, Mr. Biden said he did not intend to create “a contemporary political battle” with Mr. Trump.

 

But he said candor was vital to moving forward.

 

“The way you have to heal, you have to recognize the extent of the wound,” Mr. Biden said. “You can’t pretend. This is serious stuff.”

 

Peter Baker contributed reporting.

 

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent covering a range of domestic and international issues in the Biden White House, including homeland security and extremism. He joined The Times in 2019 as the homeland security correspondent. @KannoYoungs

Michael M. Grynbaum

Jan. 6, 2022, 4:24 p.m. ETJan. 6, 2022

Jan. 6, 2022

By Michael M. Grynbaum

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/06/us/jan-6-capitol-riot#right-wing-media-criticized-bidens-speech-and-played-down-the-jan-6-anniversary

 

Right-wing media criticized Biden’s speech and played down the Jan. 6 anniversary.

 

Breitbart News called it the “Democrat Day of Hysteria.” Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, went on Fox News to criticize President Biden for a “mass obsession with Donald Trump.” The right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro wrote on Twitter that “this January 6 extravaganza will earn a standing ovation from the media echo chamber, and achieve nothing else.”

 

Many conservative media outlets covered Thursday’s anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by lobbing criticism at Mr. Biden for his morning speech, which accused his predecessor of holding a “dagger at the throat of America.” Pro-Trump commentators called that an unnecessary politicization of the day’s events that would divide Americans.

 

One chief narrative on conservative platforms was the notion that Democrats and mainstream journalists had overblown the attack on the Capitol and were overly fixated on Thursday’s commemoration of Jan. 6, which marked the first interruption of the peaceful transfer of power in American history.

 

“Unless you were there that day, you cannot possibly understand what it was like,” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Wednesday evening, mocking what he deemed an overly emotional response by reporters. “Imagine the Tet offensive, plus Falluja, plus the night before Thanksgiving at Whole Foods.”

 

Fox News carried Mr. Biden’s speech live on Thursday morning, along with analysis from its political staff and a report from the congressional correspondent Chad Pergram, who covered the riot in person that day. Bret Baier, Fox’s chief political anchor, cautioned that the comments of Vice President Kamala Harris, which included references to major attacks on the United States, could stoke criticism from conservatives.

 

“The fact that the vice president conveyed that Jan. 6, 2021 was like Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001 — even for some people who are going to condemn the attacks and the riot, they’re going to find that, I think, pretty hyperbolic,” Mr. Baier said. “And for 9/11 family survivors, maybe insulting. We may see that backlash.”

 

Mr. Baier is set to interview Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a sharp Trump critic, at 6 p.m. on his flagship program.

 

Still, there were long stretches where Fox News entirely set aside the subject of the Capitol attack. The network’s 2 p.m. hour came and went without a mention of the anniversary or of Mr. Biden’s speech, a period when CNN and MSNBC carried wall-to-wall coverage of the anniversary, including live remarks from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Instead, “America Reports,” Fox News’s afternoon newscast, ran segments on the closure of the Chicago public school system, a possible change of venue for the Super Bowl, and ties between the billionaire George Soros and prosecutors in Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere.

 

In that particular hour, even Newsmax, which is known for a more sharply right-wing approach than Fox News, ran anniversary coverage. One segment included a correspondent’s on-air reminder that Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud were “rejected unanimously by the courts and even his own attorney general.”

 

One America News Network, a far-right channel carried in some 35 million households, ran a segment about “the patriotic demonstrations at the Capitol on Jan. 6”  that amplified a range of conspiracy theories, including the falsehoods that the attack was predominantly peaceful and a ploy by liberals to strip patriotic Americans of their liberties. “Leftist, Media Narrative Surrounding January 6th, 2021 Simply an Excuse for Democrats to Seize Power,” read an onscreen headline.

 

On Wednesday, Mr. Carlson, the top-rated Fox News host, used his show to continue his revisionist approach to the Jan. 6 riot and to mock liberals and journalists who were emphasizing the significance of its anniversary on Thursday.

 

“Pretending that a protest was actually a failed coup is the Democratic Party’s entire strategy to win this year’s midterm election,” Mr. Carlson told viewers. “At this point, it’s all they’ve got.”