“Democracy is on the ballot“ Biden puts January 6 at centre of re-election bid

President Joe Biden on Friday (January 5) accused Republican Donald Trump, his likely 2024 election opponent, of instigating the Jan. 6 attacks and then refusing entreaties to call them off, putting the deadly 2021 uprising at the center of his bid for re-election. ’’Members of his staff, members of his family, Republican leaders who were under attack at that very moment, pled with him. Act. Call off the mob. Imagine had he gone out and said: ’Stop.’ And still, Trump did nothing. Was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.’’ Biden marked three years since the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks with his first major campaign speech of the year, applying the heat on Trump as his campaign pushes against questions about his handling of the U.S. economy and his age, 81. Trump is 77. Biden vowed that he will make the defense, protection and preservation of democracy his central promise, and suggested that a vote for Trump meant a vote for a dictatorshi