Outgoing President Joe Biden marked the fourth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of loyalists to Donald Trump by calling on Americans to stand guard against future attacks on democracy.
The Capitol attack took place on January 6, 2021, following weeks of Trump insisting that his loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential race was due to election fraud — a claim that he and his allies were unable to prove, and which several federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, refused to entertain after dozens of attempts by Trump and his loyalists to have the results overturned.
Trump called for his followers to descend on Washington D.C. on January 6 four years ago, promising them a “wild” time on the day Congress is constitutionally obligated to certify the Electoral College. During his speech outside of the White House that day, Trump repeated his incendiary claims that the election was “stolen” from him and his followers, urging those in attendance — some of whom were armed, which he was aware of — to march to the Capitol to demand that Congress halt its proceedings.
After arriving at the Capitol grounds, the mob, numbering in the thousands, violently breached the building, breaking windows and attacking police officers in order to do so, at a time when COVID-19 restrictions were in place. Trump reportedly watched the events unfold on television for several hours at the White House, gleeful about the chaos that was unfolding in his name, according to witnesses within his office. Despite pleas from congressional lawmakers (including his own GOP allies), Trump took no action until several hours later, when he asked the mob to disperse, telling them in a video message that “we love you.”
In the years since the attack, Trump and his allies have wrongfully described the mob as having been peaceful; at other times, his allies have insisted that left-leaning instigators in the crowd were the true attackers, a false claim that has been thoroughly debunked.
Their efforts to re-tell the happenings of that day appear to have paid off. A recent Economist/YouGov poll shows that, while a plurality of respondents (46 percent) view the day’s events as a violent insurrection in Trump’s name, 3 in 10 respondents (29 percent) say it was a legitimate political exercise. When the attack took place four years ago, a PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that only 23 percent found the attack to be a legitimate political action, with 72 percent of Americans viewing it as an unlawful event.
Most notably, the attack was not viewed as a disqualifying event for Trump by nearly one in two voters, with Trump winning the 2024 presidential election this past November.
In an op-ed observing the fourth anniversary of the attack that was published on Monday in The Washington Post, President Joe Biden said that Americans “should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault.” But he added that “we should not forget” the attack that took place.
“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day,” Biden wrote in his missive. “To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.”
“This is not what happened,” Biden said.
On this day, we cannot forget. … We should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed.
Others marked the anniversary by rejecting the notion that it was as peaceful as Trump and his loyalists now claim.
“January 6 was a violent attack on the law enforcement officers defending the Capitol, and it was an unprecedented attack on a cornerstone of our system of government — the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“The American people must never be allowed to forget the events of January 6, 2021,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “History will always remember the attempted insurrection, and we will never allow the violence that unfolded in plain sight to be whitewashed.”
January 6, 2021 was an event “where Donald Trump incited a violent mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol because he lost the presidential election,” Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin) said on Facebook. “No attempts to downplay or lie about what happened will erase that truth.”
The “grievances” of those who attacked the Capitol “were never based on evidence,” Texas-based educator Daniel Santos wrote on X. “As a history teacher, I will not whitewash or erase primary sources to appease extremists.”
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