Joe Biden describes US Capitol violence as 'contempt for democracy'

Describing the attack at US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters as one of the darkest days in the US history, President-elect Joe Biden said the violence was the result of the President’s “contempt for democracy”.

The riot at the US Capitol on Wednesday was not dissent, disorder or protest, it was chaos, Biden told reporters on Thursday in Wilmington, Delaware.

“They weren’t protesters, don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming but that isn’t true. We could see it coming. The past four years we have had a president who has made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law, clear in everything he has done”, he said.

Trump has always attacked the free press who dared to question his power, repeatedly calling them the enemy of the people, a language long been used by autocrats and dictators all over the world to hold on to power, he added.

Trump was trying to use a mob to silence the voices of nearly 160 million Americans who summoned the courage in the face of a pandemic that threatened their health and their lives to cast that sacred ballot, he said.

Joe Biden describes US Capitol violence as ‘contempt for democracy’