In his State of the Union address, US President Joe Biden has said democracy in the United States must be defended.
"Democracy must be defended," the 81-year-old said during the address on Thursday evening in Washington.
"My predecessor — and some of you here — seek to bury the truth about January 6 — I will not do that," he said, referring to former US president Donald Trump and the storming of the US Capitol by Trump's supporters on January 6, 2021.
The insurgents who came to Washington at that time to stop the peaceful transfer of power and reverse the will of the people were not patriots, he said. The conspiracy to overturn the election results after the fact was the greatest threat to democracy since the American Civil War, Biden said.
But the US had been strong and democracy had prevailed, he added. Biden did not mention Trump by name, but merely referred to him as his predecessor.
Biden and Trump are expected to run against each other again as the nominated candidates of their parties in the presidential election in November.
Trump harshly attacked Biden in a statement before his speech. He said that Biden was lying like crazy in order to evade responsibility for the terrible devastation that he and his party had caused in the US, calling it a "horror show."
