January 7, 2021

“Don’t Dare Call Them Protesters”: Biden Slams Pro-Trump Mob and Urges DOJ Reform

Biden Transition/CNP/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In what may have been his most personal, direct, and poignant speech to date, President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday condemned Wednesday’s violence on Capitol Hill, denounced President Trump for inciting the riot, and reflected on the events in American history that led to this moment.

Biden took a hard-line stance on the pro-Trump throng that smashed the windows of the Capitol Building and ransacked the interior. “Don’t dare call them protesters,” he said. “They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It’s that basic.”

And, he noted, those domestic terrorists wouldn’t have acted without Trump’s leadership. “I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming,” Biden said. “The past four years, we’ve had a president who’s made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done. He unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of our democracy from the outset, and yesterday was the culmination of that unrelenting attack.”

One of the most striking moments of the speech came when Biden described the message his college-aged granddaughter sent him: “Pop, this isn’t fair,” alongside a photo of military personnel lining the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a Black Lives Matter protest this summer.

“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said, echoing an observation made countless times on social media yesterday. “We all know that’s true, and it is unacceptable.”

Biden further suggested that the Department of Justice has strayed from its original purpose of stamping out the racism that pervaded the country during Reconstruction. The DOJ “was formed in 1870 to enforce the Civil Rights Amendment that grew out of the Civil War,” he said, “to stand up to the Klan, to stand up to racism, to take on domestic terrorism.”

He concluded, “This original spirit must again guide and animate its work.”

Watch the opening of Biden’s address below:

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate