On the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riots, a polarised U.S. public will be addressed by both President Biden and ex-President Trump in a split-screen event.
On this day, i.e., January 6 2021, a mob of Trump supporters accumulated at the capitol hill and barged into the Congress, the seat of American democracy. Their aim was to impede and preclude the newly-elected lawmakers from certifying the presidency of Joe Biden, who had won the November 3, 2020 election by over seven million votes.
Both President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will address the nation from inside the Capitol Hill along with Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. It is reported that the address will likely raise threats to American democracy from attacks from radical fringe groups to a new level. One of President Biden’s objectives after assuming Presidency was to reconcile the political fault-lines and reunite the American public after a high voltage election campaign followed by an election result, the sanctity and validity of which was publicly questioned by President Trump. The political polarisation is, however, starker than ever. This can be encapsulated by the fact that the majority of Republican lawmakers have refused to condemn the attacks.
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Trump’s speech will be broadcast from his property, Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Commentators believe that Trump is likely to repeat his unfounded claims about the elections being rigged in Biden’s favour. However, these claims come on the back of a vicious economic situation in the U.S. which has seen inflation break a 40-year record in December 2021 and record high COVID infections as well as poor overall approval ratings for the U.S. President which has been hovering around low 40s as reported in a Gallup release.
In a recently conducted poll by The Washington Post/University of Maryland, two-thirds of Trump supporters believe that Joe Biden’s presidency is illegitimate. The poll further notes that 83 percent of his supporters put his responsibility in inciting the riots at “none” or “some” and 40 percent Republican (compared to 23 percent Democrat) voters believe acts of violence against the government is justified.
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What is worrying political commentators is that the rioters were the average American public, not just a radical group. “What is so frightful about where we are right now isn't just that these are elite attacks, but they are being fueled by a grass roots movement,” says Lara Brown of Georgetown University in a report by Agence France-Presse.
