Associated Press
President-elect Joe Biden is calling the violent group that descended on the U.S. Capitol “domestic terrorists” and laying the blame for the violence squarely at President Donald Trump’s feet.
During remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday, Biden says people should not call the hundreds of Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol protesters. Rather, he says, they are “a riotous mob — insurrectionists, domestic terrorists.” Biden said Trump is guilty of “trying to use a mob to silence the voices of nearly 160 million Americans” who voted in November.
Biden says the president has “made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of claw clear in everything he has done” and unleashed an “all-out attack” on the country’s democratic institutions that ultimately led to the violence Wednesday.
Congress confirmed Biden as the presidential election winner before dawn Thursday after a violent mob loyal to Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday in a stunning attempt to overturn the election, undercut the nation’s democracy and keep Trump in the White House.
Lawmakers were resolved to complete the Electoral College tally in a display to the country, and the world, of the nation’s enduring commitment to uphold the will of the voters and the peaceful transfer of power. They pushed through the night with tensions high and the nation’s capital on alert.
Shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday, lawmakers finished their work, confirming Biden won the election.
Before Trump posted a video to Facebook and Twitter, later taken down from both sites, telling the reporters to return home, Biden made a plea for Trump to appear on national television.
“Enough is enough is enough,” he said Wednesday afternoon.
“I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
