{"id":22300,"date":"2024-01-06T03:35:04","date_gmt":"2024-01-06T09:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=22300"},"modified":"2024-01-06T03:35:10","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T09:35:10","slug":"one-attack-two-interpretations-biden-and-trump-both-make-the-jan-6-riot-a-political-rallying-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=22300","title":{"rendered":"One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Former President Donald Trump<\/a> will spend Saturday\u2019s third anniversary of the Capitol riot<\/a> by holding two campaign rallies in leadoff-voting Iowa<\/a> in his bid to win back the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To mark the moment, President Joe Biden<\/a> plans to visit a site near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on Friday where George Washington and the struggling Continental Army endured a tough winter during the American Revolution. Biden\u2019s advisers say the stop in a critical swing state will highlight Trump\u2019s role in the Jan. 6 siege and give the Democrat a chance for him to lay out the stakes of this year\u2019s election<\/a>. Weather concerns led Biden to move up his appearance from Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vice President Kamala Harris plans to echo Biden\u2019s message in her own speech Saturday at a church convention in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A person familiar with her remarks, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the speech, said Harris will focus on the battle over American freedoms and principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Biden and Trump now\u00a0headed toward a potential 2020 rematch<\/a>, both are talking about the same event in very different ways and offering framing they believe gives them an advantage. The dueling narratives reflect how an attack that disrupted the certification of the election is increasingly viewed differently along partisan lines \u2014 and how Trump has bet that the riot won\u2019t hurt his candidacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump supporters stormed the Capitol<\/a> in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Biden\u2019s victory, and they forced lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to flee for their lives<\/a>. Many Trump loyalists walked to the Capitol after a rally outside the White House in which the Republican president exhorted the crowd to \u201cfight like hell\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019re not going to have a country anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine deaths were linked to the attack and more than 700 people have gone to court for their roles in it, and more than 450 people have been sentenced to prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal prosecutors in Washington have charged Trump in connection with the riot<\/a>, citing his promotion of false and debunked theories of election fraud and efforts to overturn the results. Trump has pleaded not guilty and continued to lie about the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has still built a commanding lead in the Republican primary, and his rivals largely refrain from criticizing him about Jan. 6. He has called it \u201ca beautiful day\u201d and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as \u201cgreat, great patriots\u201d and \u201chostages.\u201d At some campaign rallies, he has played a recording of \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d sung by jailed rioters \u2014 the anthem interspersed with his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican strategist Alice Stewart said that \u201ca lot of Republican voters don\u2019t love Jan. 6, but they\u2019re not obsessed about it either\u201d and may support Trump because they oppose Biden\u2019s economic policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRepublican voters can hold two consecutive thoughts and say, \u2018Jan. 6, that wasn\u2019t great, but that doesn\u2019t affect my bottom line,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a>, one of Trump\u2019s rivals for the Republican nomination, called Jan. 6 a \u201cprotest\u201d that \u201cended up devolving,\u201d and has more recently said Trump \u201cshould have come out more forcefully\u201d against the rioters. Another candidate, Trump\u2019s former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley,<\/a> frequently tells crowds that Jan. 6 \u201cwas not a beautiful day, it was a terrible day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But views overall of the attack have hardened along partisan lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days after the attack, 52% of U.S. adults said Trump bore a lot of responsibility for Jan. 6, according to the Pew Research Center<\/a>. By early 2022, that had declined to 43%. The number of Americans who said Trump bore no responsibility also increased to 32% in 2022 compared to 24% in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll<\/a> released this week found that about 7 in 10 Republicans say too much is being made of the attack. Just 18% of GOP supporters say that protesters who entered the Capitol were \u201cmostly violent,\u201d down from 26% in 2021, while 77% of Democrats and 54% of independents say the protesters were mostly violent \u2014 essentially unchanged from 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A December poll<\/a> from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, meanwhile, found that 87% of Democrats and 54% of independents believe a second Trump term would negatively affect U.S. democracy. Some 82% of Republicans believe democracy would be weakened by another Biden win, with 56% of independents agreeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s campaign also announced an advertising push starting Saturday with a spot centering on the Capitol attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the ad, Biden says, \u201cThere\u2019s something dangerous happening in America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy,\u201d Biden says as images from the insurrection appear. \u201cAll of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His campaign is spending $500,000 to run the 60-second ad on national television news and on local evening news in TV markets in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as shorter versions on digital platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a theme Biden has returned to repeatedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He marked the first anniversary of the riot in 2022 by standing inside the Capitol\u2019s National Statuary Hall \u2014 which was flooded by pro-Trump rioters during the attack \u2014 to suggest that his predecessor and his supporters had had \u201ca dagger at the throat of America.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the president repeatedly characterized<\/a> Trump as a threat to democracy. That included a speech at Philadelphia\u2019s Constitution Hall<\/a>, where he said that the \u201cextreme ideology\u201d of Trump and his supporters \u201cthreatens the very foundation of our republic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the second anniversary of the attack in 2023, Biden awarded presidential medals to 14 people<\/a> for their work protecting the Capitol during the attack and decried \u201ca violent mob of insurrectionists.\u201d More recently, he said there was \u201cno question\u201d Trump supported an insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot even during the Civil War did insurrectionists breach our Capitol,\u201d said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Biden\u2019s reelection campaign, in a call with reporters this week. \u201cBut, at the urging of Donald Trump, insurrectionists on January 6, 2021 did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump now counters that the federal charges he\u2019s facing related to Jan. 6 \u2014 as well as authorities in Maine and Colorado trying to keep him off primary ballots<\/a> on grounds that he incited an insurrection<\/a> \u2014 show that Democrats are the ones looking to undercut the nation\u2019s core values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJoe Biden and his allies are a real and compelling threat to our democracy,\u201d Trump senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in a memo this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from the back and forth of politics, such arguments over who endangers America more could indicate a deeper problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen each side starts talking about the other as a threat to democracy \u2014 whatever the reality is \u2014 that\u2019s a sign of a democracy that\u2019s deconsolidating,\u201d said Daniel Ziblatt, a government professor at Harvard University and co-author of the book \u201cHow Democracies Die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Former President Donald Trump will spend Saturday\u2019s third anniversary of the Capitol riot by holding two campaign rallies in leadoff-voting Iowa in his bid to win back the White House. To mark the moment, President Joe Biden plans to visit a site near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on Friday where George Washington and the struggling Continental Army endured a tough winter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1169,3417,25659,1715,1230,25660],"class_list":["post-22300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-biden","tag-january-6","tag-one-attack","tag-riots","tag-trump","tag-two-interpretations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22302,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22300\/revisions\/22302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}