On the eve of the third anniversary of Donald Trump’s attempt to reverse the will of American voters, President Joe Biden insisted that “[w]hether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about.”

That is the question, isn’t it?

As attorney Joyce Vance noted on 05 January 2024, “we are here because [on 13 February 2021] Senate Republicans refused to convict Donald Trump on the article of impeachment [that charged] him with inciting insurrection.”

The vote: 57 guilty, 43 not guilty; 67 votes were needed to convict.

Speaking to America from Valley Forge, PA, on Friday, President Biden reminded us that what we saw with our own eyes on 06 January 2021 was the truth:

For the first time [in] our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful … transfer of power in America … smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police.

Outside, gallows were erected as the MAGA crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Inside, they hunted for Speaker Pelosi [of] the House, chanting, as they marched through and smashed windows, “Where’s Nancy?”

Over 140 police officers were injured. Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day.

And because … of Donald Trump’s lies, they died because these lies brought a mob to Washington.

Historian Timothy Snyder identified gathering forces of fascism in his 2017 book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

In Chapter six, he warned of paramilitaries like the Proud Boys. “Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it,” he wrote. “Nazi storm troopers began as a security detail clearing the halls of Hitler’s opponents during his rallies.”

6/20. Be wary of paramilitaries. #OnTyranny pic.twitter.com/FRAQ6RHRdq

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) June 7, 2020

In the first 2020 presidential debate, Trump refused to “unequivocally condemn white supremacist violence” when debate moderator and FOX News host Chris Wallace asked “if he would condemn white supremacist and militia groups that have shown up at some protests.”

Instead of condemning White supremacists, Trump told the Proud Boys, a “far-right extremist group,” that they should “stand back and stand by.”

In On Tyranny, Snyder warned about the big lie: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.”

In 2017, Trump told six lies a day on average. In 2018, it was 16 lies a day. By 2020, Trump told about 27 lies every day.

“The fascist style,” Snyder wrote, makes “fiction plausible” through repetition, an insight initially made by Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who chronicled Hitler’s rise to power and World War II.

Biden continued:

In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6th, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election… We saw it with our own eyes.

I know this. You know this.

In five weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments about whether or not the 14 Amendment disqualifies Trump from being president.

Read and share Biden’s transcript.

Speak out.

Never forget.

Democracy depends on us.

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