WASHINGTON — In the first presidential debateRepublican Donald Trump about the January 6, 2021: Attack on the Capitolshifted the blame for the violent siege to the mafia and repeatedly refused to state unequivocally that he will accept the results of this year’s elections. White House Elections.
And President Joe Bidenwho has said that the work of his presidency is to restore the soul of the nation, messed up and floppedand failed to forcefully confront, challenge and hold Trump, the indicted former president, accountable for the attack on the election — and democracy.
It is an extraordinary moment, or lack thereof, that is alarming to pro-democracy advocates, with the far-reaching attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the subsequent insurrection that defined Trump’s presidency fading from view during the opening debate of the general election campaign.
Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, who chaired the Jan. 6 House investigation committee in the previous Congress, said it is a very unfortunate situation.
“We could have a meeting on January 6, 2.0,” Thompson said outside the Capitol on Friday.
The outcome underscores the choice Americans face this fall, as the 2020 election controversy remains fundamental to the 2024 campaign but is also overshadowed by it, despite the four-count federal indictment in return for Trump before working overturn the results four years ago, in the lead-up to the violent siege and despite the conviction of more than 1,000 people in the attack on the Capitol.
It comes as the High Council weighs matters involving January 6, including a decision Friday that makes it easier for some rioters to challenge their charges and convictions, and another expected Monday about whether Trump can claim immunity in the federal election case.
All in all, it seems that what seemed politically untenable when the defeated Trump dejectedly left Washington on Biden’s inauguration day on January 20, 2021, is now within reach. The president who tried to overturn an election is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and appears to be on his way back to the White House.
“We are four months away from the first presidential election since a violent attack on our Capitol. … And the man responsible for that — Donald Trump — is currently the leading candidate,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the advocacy group Protect Democracy, which works to challenge authoritarianism.
“You would think that in itself would be disqualifying, or at least the central focus of the election,” he said.
And yet, Bassin said, the topic was “relegated to a sideshow” in the debate, “and the current president is struggling to emphasize why this issue should be of existential importance.”
The forum itself is not necessarily to blame. moderators put pressure on the candidateswith Trump being asked not once, but repeatedly, whether he would commit not to holding another January 6 and this time accepting the outcome of the election.
Trump insisted he had “virtually nothing to do” with the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol and tried to shift blame to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., repeating his own words. false claims about the delay in sending in the National Guard.
Biden, who has convulsed the Democratic Party with his disappointing debate performance, featuring terse answers and few profound thoughts, struggled to give a coherent response despite giving high-profile speeches about January 6, including on its first anniversary.
“Look, he encouraged those people to go to Capitol Hill,” Biden said on the debate stage.
Thompson, whose committee prepared a lengthy, more than 1,000-page report on its investigation into Trump’s months-long effort to overturn the election and the storming of the Capitol, said Biden missed a “golden opportunity” to set things right while millions of people watched the election. debate.
It was up to the people who actually experienced January 6, the lawmakers who fled to safety as the mob of Trump supporters approached, to respond. Rioters, many carrying flagpoles and tactical gear, engaged in brutal, bloody hand-to-hand combat, battling U.S. Capitol Police to gain entry to the building.
“January 6 was a dark day,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on social media.
“Trump-inspired insurrectionists attempted to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power,” he said. Schumer slammed the Supreme Court’s “shameful decision” on Friday, which he said “will embolden anti-democratic radicals and make it harder for our justice system to bring insurrectionists to justice.”
Pelosi said Trump presented “another pack of lies” during the debate. “How dare he lay the blame for January 6 on anyone other than himself, the instigator of an uprising?”
On Friday, the Supreme Court limited a federal obstruction law used to indict Trump along with hundreds of Capitol riot defendants. While the ruling will certainly lead to a reconsideration of some cases against the rioters, it is unclear how it will affect Trump’s indictment, which also includes other charges.
Trump said at a rally Friday in Chesapeake, Virginia, that something “big” just happened in response to the decision in the obstruction case, to roars of “USA!” chants from the crowd.
“They must be released immediately, immediately,” Trump said of the suspects, whom he called “the J6 hostages.”
A more energetic Biden said at his own rally in the swing state of North Carolina: “The choice in this election is simple. Donald Trump will destroy our democracy. I will defend it.”
—-
Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.