Extract from ABC News
Joe Biden has accused Republican Donald Trump, his likely 2024 election opponent, of instigating the January 6, 2021, attacks and plotting revenge on those seeking to punish him, as the president put the future of US democracy at the centre of his bid for re-election.
Key points:
- Mr Biden said Mr Trump "left the dirty work to others" on January 6
- He asked "mainstream Republicans" who cherish US democracy to back him
- He also criticised Republicans for changing their tone on Mr Trump's actions in 2021
"He told the crowd to fight like hell. And all hell was unleashed," Mr Biden said of the attack.
"Then as usual he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House."
Mr Biden marked three years since the attacks with his first major campaign speech of the year, applying the heat on Mr Trump as he pushes against questions about his handling of the US economy and his age, 81.
Mr Trump is 77.
Whether Mr Biden's Friday speech will make an impact 10 months before Election Day — in a politically polarised country where voters get news and information from wildly different sources — remains to be seen.
But it set the tone and laid out the stakes of what is likely to be a bitter battle.
Mr Biden characterised Mr Trump and his followers as dangerous outliers and asked Democrats, independents and "mainstream Republicans" who cherish US democracy to back him.
"Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot," he said.
Mr Trump later hit back at Mr Biden at a rally in Iowa, describing the US under the current president as a "failing" nation, beset by "terrorists" and immigrants from "mental asylums" pouring over the border with Mexico.
"Not one thing has gotten better under crooked Joe Biden. Everything's a mess," Mr Trump said to several hundred cheering supporters at the rally in the state's rural north-west.
Mr Trump only briefly addressed the events of January 6, whose three-year anniversary is on Saturday, repeating unfounded claims that the 2020 contest was marred by widespread voter fraud.
On Friday, Mr Biden said Mr Trump's re-election bid was based on trying to seek "revenge and retribution" against his political enemies.
He reminded Americans that Mr Trump had called his opponents "vermin", the "same exact language used in Nazi Germany".
"How dare he? Who in God's name does he think he is?" said Mr Biden, lowering his voice to a whisper.
Mr Trump, president from 2017 to 2021, who is leading the field for the Republican nomination for president, contested his defeat in the 2020 election, prompting thousands of his supporters to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The failed bid to stop formal certification of the result resulted in the deaths of five people and injured dozens of police officers.
Republicans swayed by 'politics, fear, money': Biden
Mr Biden also criticised Republicans for changing their tone on Mr Trump, saying said when the attacks on the US Capitol took place, "there was no doubt about the truth" and that some Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators had publicly and privately condemned the uprising.
"But now as time has gone on, politics, fear, money have all intervened," he said.
"And those MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned our democracy."
Republicans challenging Mr Trump in the 2024 nominating contest have mostly steered clear of criticising Mr Trump's actions on that day, as opinion polls show Republican voters are less likely to blame Mr Trump for his actions on January 6 than they were three years ago.
Before his speech at a community college in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, Mr Biden took a tour of the Valley Forge site of George Washington's Revolutionary War-era winter headquarters in the bitterly cold months of late 1777 and early 1778.
In his speech, Mr Biden contrasted Mr Trump's bid to hang on to power to the example set by Washington, who stepped down willingly after two terms as the first US president.
Mr Biden returned again and again to January 6, including a vivid description of what transpired that day, including protesters calling for the hanging of then-vice-president Mike Pence.
People died because Mr Trump's lies "brought a mob to Washington", he said.
In excerpts of a speech expected in Sioux Center, Iowa, later on Friday, Mr Trump called Mr Biden's record "an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure" and accused the president of running a "pathetic fearmongering campaign".
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