Biden accuses Trump and his allies of holding ‘a dagger at the throat of American democracy.’

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WASHINGTON — President Biden denounced former President Donald J. Trump for promoting lies and tearing down American democracy because he could not stand the fact that he lost an election, accusing his predecessor of putting his own interests ahead of the country’s.

In his most vehement attack on the former president since taking office, Mr. Biden used the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to accuse Mr. Trump of waging an “undemocratic” and “un-American” attack on the legitimacy of the election system, saying he and his allies placed “a dagger at the throat of American democracy.”

“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 breached the Capitol,” Mr. Biden said, standing in the same National Statuary Hall where a mob of Trump supporters invaded a year ago. After encouraging the mob, Mr. Biden added, Mr. Trump sat watching in his White House dining room “doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives were at risk, the nation’s Capitol under siege.”

Without using Mr. Trump’s name, the president accused his predecessor of trying to rewrite history. “He has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” Mr. Biden said. “He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest.” Mr. Biden added: “He can’t accept he lost.”

The speech kicked off a day of commemorations that, instead of showcasing American unity, will underscore just how fractured the nation remains a year after Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat at the ballot box stirred backers to invade the Capitol, disrupt the counting of the Electoral College votes and send lawmakers scurrying for safety.

Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders plan addresses, discussions and a candlelight vigil while Republican leaders largely stayed away. Mr. Trump originally planned a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to rail against the investigation into the attack but canceled to the relief of Republicans who considered it counterproductive.

The disparate approaches to the day reflect how much Jan. 6 has become interpreted through a political lens. Democrats view the storming of the Capitol as an existential threat to constitutional democracy unlike any in modern times. Most Republicans would rather focus on anything else, with some convinced that it is being used as a partisan weapon against them and others fearful of crossing Mr. Trump, who continues to wield outsize power within the party.

Feelings remain raw on Capitol Hill, a place of post-traumatic stress that has yet to fully recover from the psychological and political scars of an assault that led to at least seven deaths and hundreds of injuries. More than the usual acrimony over legislative differences, the legacy of Jan. 6 has exacerbated the toxic rift between members and staff aides on opposite sides of the aisle.

While Mr. Biden has hesitated to engage in a back-and-forth with his predecessor, he used his 20-minute speech to more directly blame Mr. Trump for encouraging the violence a year ago than ever before. And he offered a striking portrait of the fragility of the two-century-old American system.

“At this moment we must decide what kind of nation we are going to be,” Mr. Biden said. “Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation.”

Mr. Biden also touched on voting rights legislation stalled in the Senate, although he has a separate speech on the subject scheduled for next week. Vice President Kamala D. Harris, who spoke before Mr. Biden, said, “We must pass voting rights bills that are now before the Senate.”

Republicans accused the White House and Democrats of politicizing the attack to promote legislation meant to benefit their own party. “It is beyond distasteful for some of our colleagues to ham-fistedly invoke the Jan. 6 anniversary to advance these aims,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader.

Many if not most Republicans plan to absent themselves from Thursday’s events, with most of the party’s senators heading to Georgia for the funeral of their former colleague Johnny Isakson.

While Mr. Trump scrapped his news conference, he continued to issue written salvos against the House committee investigating the attack as he seeks to reframe the riot as the understandable result of anger at the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was stolen.

Although Republican leaders will remain officially silent, Mr. Trump’s camp will be represented by Stephen K. Bannon, his onetime chief strategist, who will host a podcast featuring two other Trump allies, Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed to this report.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/06 ... pitol-riot