(Headline USA) While many would beg to differ, President Joe Biden claimed on Saturday that American democracy was alive and well during a tribute to fallen law enforcement officers.
Framed by the Capitol, Biden honored those who fought off the four-hour-long Jan. 6 revolt at that very site by declaring “because of you, democracy survived.”
Nearly 700 people have been charged for participating in the mostly peaceful protest, during which one pro-Trump supporter was murdered by a Capitol Police officer. Some have reportedly remained incarcerated without arraignment or trial in the nine months since.
Moreover, the deep divisions in the country have only grown since Biden assumed the presidency, raising questions for some as to whether the US remained a democracy.
Many of those who attended the Save America Rally that preceded the protest were voicing their alarm over the illegitimate outcome of the election, during which several states violated their own constitutions to change the election laws in ways that favored Democrats, using the coronavirus as their pretense.
Biden also has governed much farther to the left than he claimed he would, and is currently pushing a $3.5 trillion spending bill filled with non-budgetary Marxist policies, which Democrats hope to pass without any Republican support in the narrowly split Congress using a parliamentary gimmick known as budget reconciliation.
Biden spoke at the 40th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service to remember the 491 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2019 and 2020.
He singled out the 150 officers who were injured and the five who died in the event’s aftermath, although none were directly related to it. Democrats have routinely tried to link the stroke of officer Brian Sicknick and the suicides of several other officers as a way to suggest the death toll was higher than it was and that Trump supporters were not the only victims.
“Nine months ago, your brothers and sisters thwarted an unconstitutional and fundamentally un-American attack on our nation’s values and our votes. Because of you, democracy survived,” Biden said. “Because of these men and women, we avoided a catastrophe, but their heroism came at a cost to you and your families.”
He has previously called the demonstration the greatest attack on America since the Civil War.
Hundreds of officers and their families sat on chairs assembled on the Capitol’s west front. Some in the audience dabbed their eyes as the president drew connections with their loss and his own history of grief, including the deaths of his first wife and two children, comparing it to “losing part of your soul.”
Unlike the fallen officers, however, Biden’s family did not die in the line of duty. His first wife and infant daughter died in a traffic accident, while his son Beau had brain cancer.
Biden also underscored the heavy burden placed on law enforcement officers, and rebuked the radical Left’s “defund the police” movement, saying that those gathered before him would get “more resources, not fewer, so you can do your job.”
“We expect everything of you and it’s beyond the capacity of anyone to meet the total expectations,” Biden said. “Being a cop today is one hell of a lot harder than it’s ever been.”
The news comes following a week in which roughly half of the Chicago police force, already driven to the breaking point by surging crime and antagonistic Democrat leaders, had resigned over vaccine mandates similar to those pushed by the Biden administration.
The president played up his working-class roots, noting that he had many childhood friends who went on to become police officers, and said he had spoken at the event many times before.
But while Biden has throughout his political career sought to identify with the uniformed services, the organization that ran Saturday’s event, the National Fraternal Order of Police, endorsed Donald Trump in the 2020 election and many rank-and-file police officers supported the former president.
Biden’s efforts to pass a police overhaul bill to tighten practices after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis collapsed, with congressional negotiators announcing in September that talks had ended without an agreement. That was a setback for the Democratic president, who campaigned on the need for policing changes and had declared it an early priority.
Additionally, his agenda on gun violence has largely stalled and his initial pick to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives—a gun-control extremist—stepped aside in the face of staunch opposition. More recently, Biden has expressed hope that he can still sign a comprehensive police overhaul bill into law, while exploring more executive actions to help hold police officers accountable for breaking the law.
At the ceremony, Biden expressed concerns for all officers in the line of duty and mentioned the three constable deputies shot in an ambush early Saturday while working at a Houston bar. One deputy was killed.
