President Biden, VP Harris Address Capitol Insurrection One Year Later
By Jason Hall
January 6, 2022
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the United States Thursday (January 6) morning on the anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
"Our democracy held. We, the people, endured. We, the people, prevailed," Biden said via CNN.
Protesters supporting former President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol amid the vote to certify Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021, which led to the death of five individuals and forced elected officials to evacuate the House and Senate chambers before later continuing session in the evening.
An announcement was made inside the Capitol ordering lawmakers to evacuate due to "an external security threat" as dozens of protesters forced their way inside the building, the Associated Press reported.
Both chambers were sent into recess and later resumed at around 8:00 p.m. EST that evening to confirm the nomination of President Biden and Vice President Harris.
President Biden specifically blamed former President Trump for inciting his supporters to deny a transfer of power based on false claims of election fraud.
"Here's the truth: A former President of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election," Biden said via CNN. "He's done so because he values power over principle. Because he sees his own interest 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. He can't accept he lost even though that's what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said he lost."
Vice President Harris, who spoke first, said the incident last year showed an example of what America would look like if democracy was dismantled.
"On Jan. 6, we all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful — the lawlessness, the violence, the chaos," Harris said via CNN.
"What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders. What they sought to degrade and destroy was not only a building, hallowed as it is. What they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals, that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend," Harris added.