On January 6, Trump repeats the lie that the 2020 election was stolen

Three years to the day that supporters of Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election victory. to certify, Mr. Trump again said that the crowd had “acted peacefully and patriotically. ‘, and he criticized the congressional committee that investigated the attack as ‘fake’.

Speaking to a crowd of hundreds of people on Saturday in Newton, Iowa, Mr Trump, who is facing criminal charges in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, made only passing references to the riot, drawing a major part of his speech focused on criticizing the president. Biden’s policies.

But as he spoke for nearly two hours, Trump repeatedly invoked the lie at the heart of the riot: that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.

“The radical left Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election,” Trump said.

Mr Trump’s speech in Newton came a day after Mr Biden strongly condemned the former president as “pro-insurgent” and a dangerous threat to democracy.

Mr. Trump responded only minimally to these charges on Saturday. He called Mr. Biden’s speech “ridiculous” and argued that the president was overly focused on the January 6, 2021 attack because “he has not had any significant successes.”

And, as he has often done in recent months, Mr. Trump sought to refute charges that he and his policies are anti-democratic by pointing the finger at Mr. Biden.

“He is a threat to democracy because he is incompetent,” Mr. Trump said, even as he accused Mr. Biden of masterminding the criminal charges against him. There is no evidence that President Biden has interfered in any of the four criminal cases against Mr. Trump, which include federal and state courts.

‘He’s corrupt. He is incompetent. He has no idea,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Biden. “He Armed the DOJ and the FBI”

More than 1,200 people have been arrested in connection with the January 6 attack, 170 have been convicted of crimes at trial and more than 700 have pleaded guilty. On Saturday, Trump referred to those captured before the attack as “hostages,” as he has done before.

Many of those present in Newton and at a rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, on Friday said they supported lenient sentences for anyone who actually committed a crime on Jan. 6. But they added that the severity of the event had been exaggerated and that the investigation into the riot was of no value.

‘You do the crime, you do the time. But just being there is not a crime,” said Bruce Fedders, 67, at Sioux Center, adding: “Jan. 6 — I won’t even use ‘rebellion’.”

Gary Leffler, Trump’s caucus captain and former candidate for the House of Representatives, said he marched on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, although he did not enter the building.

“There was no feeling from anyone present that this was an uprising,” Mr. 62, 62, said. Leffler in Newton. “That’s a lot of horse manure.”