WASHINGTON — President Biden will deliver yet another speech on last year’s Capitol riot as part of a desperate closing appeal to voters in next week’s midterm elections, the White House said Wednesday
Biden will speak at around 7 p.m. from a rented room in Union Station, the rail juncture from which many of then-President Donald Trump’s fans streamed to the Capitol siege on Jan. 6, 2021.
Biden communications adviser Anita Dunn announced the plan at a Wednesday morning event hosted by the publication Axios, saying, “It’s from Capitol Hill because that’s where there was an attempt to subvert our democracy.”
The speech wasn’t on Biden’s public schedule and Dunn’s description of the event created confusion — with some reporters apparently believing it would take place at the Capitol itself.
The White House press office later clarified that the speech would take place in Union Station’s Columbus Club, which can fit up to 350 people.
The Democratic National Committee, which is hosting the event, said Biden’s remarks will be about “preserving and protecting our democracy” and “the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday at her regular briefing that “the president, again, is making this speech because we’re seeing an alarming number of Republican officials who are saying — they’re being very clear they’re not going to accept the results of these [midterm] elections.”
Jean-Pierre didn’t cite specific examples of Republican officials saying they would not accept midterm results and most polls suggest the elections may result in GOP gains.
“We’re less than a week away — a week out, as you all know, from the midterms,” Jean-Pierre said. “We are seeing… an alarming number of Republican officials suggest they will not accept the results of this election.”
Biden has invoked the riot, which left five Trump supporters dead, throughout the campaign for control of the House and Senate — warning that the 45th president’s allies and supporters cannot be allowed to return to power.
The riot delayed certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College and sent lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence fleeing to safety. Trump was impeached by the House for allegedly inciting the mayhem by falsely alleging election fraud, but he was acquitted by the Senate, where seven Republicans voted to find him guilty — not enough to reach the required 2/3 threshold for conviction.
But Biden’s attempts to use the violence to rally voters have stumbled before — most notably when he delivered a rare primetime address on Sept. 1 from Philadelphia.
The president’s strident 24-minute exhortation at Independence Hall slammed members of Trump’s MAGA — or “Make America Great Again” — movement, but the event was widely panned for the poor optics of devilish red lighting in the backdrop.
Biden also took heat for using uniformed members of the US Marine Corps as a backdrop and a heckler could be heard on the official video feed shouting “f–k Joe Biden” during the speech, forcing Biden twice to deviate from his script to respond.
Polls show that voters are most concerned about the economy going into next Tuesday’s election — an issue that is less favorable to Biden and Democrats, who currently hold both chambers of Congress — amid the worst sustained inflation since 1981, elevated gas prices and soaring interest rates.
A CNN poll released Wednesday morning, for example, showed that 51% of likely voters said the economy and inflation were the most important issues in determining their vote, followed by abortion (15%) and “voting rights and election integrity” (9%).
But other polls show a sizable group of US voters does have concerns about the status of US democracy, giving Biden a potential opening.
A NPR/PBS/Marist College poll released Wednesday, which showed Republicans leading Democrats by three percentage points on the generic congressional ballot, found 36% of those who said they were definitely voting Nov. 8 listed inflation as their top issue, but 31% said “preserving democracy” was most important.
