Trump continues tantrum set off by Biden saying he lost

Mr Trump’s latest grievance-laded statement is the fourth he has issued in the 24 hours since Mr Biden blamed his predecessor’s lies about the 2020 election for the 6 January insurrection

Former president Donald Trump has issued yet another rambling, grievance-laden statement in response to President Joe Biden’s speech marking the one-year anniversary of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

On Thursday, Mr Biden delivered remarks in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall to commemorate the year that has passed since a pro-Trump mob stormed the building in hopes of preventing Congress from certifying his 2020 electoral college victory over Mr Trump.

For the first time since taking office, the president placed the blame for the worst attack on America’s seat of government since Major General Robert Ross ordered British troops to burn it in 1814 squarely on his predecessor, who he accused of spreading “a web of lies” about the last presidential election “because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America's interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution”.

“He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own Attorney General, his own Vice President, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost,” Mr Biden said.

On Friday, the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president issued the fourth statement of the last 24 hours attacking Mr Biden for having pointed out his propensity to lie and condemning the American press for reporting on his remarks and the anniversary itself through his “Save America” political action committee.

“What we witnessed yesterday was the last gasps of a corrupt and discredited left-wing political and media establishment that has, for decades, driven our country into the ground—shipping away our jobs, surrendering our strength, sacrificing our sovereignty, attacking our history and values, and trying to turn America into a country that our people can barely recognize,” Mr Trump said.

He accused Mr Biden of being “the voice of desperation and despair,” and suggested that the speech he delivered on Thursday was the work of unspecified “handlers” who “gave” him the speech to read “because they know the unprecedented failures of his presidency and the left-wing extremism of the Pelosi-Schumer Congress have destroyed the Democrat Party,” adding later that marking the anniversary of the attack he inspired upon the Capitol was based on “preposterous fabrications”.

The former president continued by rattling off a succession of false and discredited right-wing conspiracy theories which have been floated to deflect from his own involvement by blaming the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Mr Trump, who in the days before the attack endorsed a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install him for a second term against the wishes of American voters, exhorted his followers to remember that he is “not the one trying to undermine American Democracy” despite the fact that numerous officials from his former administration worked on a plan to do just that.

Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University professor of communications and the author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, told The Independent Mr Trump’s latest missive was a “totally predictable response” to Mr Biden’s speech.

“We are in a battle for shaping public memory of January 6th and the 2020 election and the threats to American democracy. We saw the Democratic Party use the occasion to solemnly mark the day, noting its place in American history and how January 6th, 2021 was a violation of our democratic norms, and we saw the Republican Party ignore or trivialize or mock those commemorations as irrelevant or sensationalized or part of the larger conspiracy,” she said.

“It's fascinating to watch the attempts to shape public memory happen in real time”.