US President Joe Biden heads into his second year in office with two unfinished aims: ending Trumpism and unifying a polarised country.
To achieve both, Biden will more regularly attack the values of Republicans aligned with former president Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, while holding out an olive branch to opponents, people close to the Democratic president said in multiple interviews inside and outside the White House in recent weeks.
Biden’s speech on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol, outlined the new approach. Biden savaged Trump, who egged on his supporters to march on the seat of Congress one year ago with unproven claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and struck out at other members of the Republican Party who continue to support his predecessor.
“‘The Big Lie’ being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day,” Biden said in a speech from inside the Capitol.
“Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country — to look at America? I cannot.”
Ahead of congressional elections in November, Biden and his closest allies have made fresh calculations about a country at a crossroads, the people close to the president said.
They see a divided public gorging itself on misleading information, not just about the 2020 election but a range of other issues including whether Covid-19 vaccines are effective. They believe the White House is hobbled by a Republican Party hell-bent on ensuring Biden’s failure, even if it damages the United States overall.
Biden is dismayed by the “silence and complacency” of Republicans in a Congress he served in for decades, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday.
On Friday, he lashed out again, in a speech about the US economy, which is outperforming those of other developed nations. “Republicans want to talk down the recovery because they voted against the legislation that made it happen,” Biden said. “I refuse to let them stand in the way of this recovery.”
Republicans accuse Biden of having tacked hard to the left since winning the White House on a largely centre-left message and of pushing spending initiatives and tax proposals that they say will hurt the economy and boost already-high inflation.
Biden stacked his first year in office with policies Democratic polling showed most voters would embrace: an aggressive Covid-19 response, stimulus checks, spending on roads and bridges, a military withdrawal from Afghanistan and cutting drug prices.
Proposing fixes for those “kitchen-table” issues, mostly avoiding divisive topics like abortion and police reform, and hewing closely to a career-long belief that simple, empathetic explanations can woo America’s centrist majority, moved the country no closer to a key goal he set out as a candidate for the presidency.
Uniting the United States “is turning out to be one of the most difficult things” he has tried to do as president, Biden admitted last month in Missouri, a state that he lost handily to Trump in the 2020 election.
Biden’s motorcade there was greeted with someone carrying a sign that read “Not our president,” another reminder that polls show most Republican voters still believe Trump’s false story about the election having been stolen. On Christmas Eve, when Biden called children to discuss Santa Claus, he was greeted by one parent with a crass shout-out popular among Trump supporters.
Aiming for the centre has not helped the president’s popularity. About 48% of Americans approved of Biden’s performance in December, compared to a 55% approval rating around his inauguration in early 2021, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
The White House believes a new effort to push core Democratic values, including speeches to tout voter-enfranchisement concerns and shoring up election laws in time for the 2022 vote, could have broad support among the American people, no matter how they previously voted.
But a shift in emphasis is risky: swing voters like it when Biden appears to be trying to work with the other side, the president’s aides and allies believe. Biden tried to thread that needle in Thursday’s speech, pledging to work together with Republicans “who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man.”
The president is willing to take short-term political heat associated with attacking Trump, allies say.
“Joe Biden has always played the long game,” said Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina lawyer, Democratic state senator and longtime Biden supporter, who met with the president last month. “He’s not worried about the week-to-week polls and the day-to-day polls. He believes what he’s doing in the long run will pay off.”
However, he added, “It may have some consequences in 2022 that he might not prefer.”
 Excerpts from the speech President Biden delivered recalling the January 6 episode:
“For the first time in our history, a president (Donald Trump) had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. But they failed. They failed.
And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens again. 
This isn’t about being bogged down in the past. It’s about making sure the past isn’t buried. That’s the only way forward. That’s what great nations do. They don’t bury the truth, they face up to it – sounds like hyperbole, but that’s your truth: They face up to it.
We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. And here’s the truth: The former president has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.
He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest, than America’s interest, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.
He can’t accept he lost even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost.
That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He’s done what no president in American history, in the history of this country, has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.
While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.
Well, whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law, and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible. Because when we have a shared belief in democracy, then anything is possible – anything.
So at this moment, we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be?
Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation.
The way forward is to recognise the truth – to live by it. The ‘Big Lie’ being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day, November 3, 2020. Think about that. Is that what you thought? Is that what you thought when you voted that day? Taking part in an insurrection? Is that what you thought you were doing? Or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?
The former president’s supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see Election Day as the day of insurrection and the riots that took place here on January 6 as a true expression of the will of the people. Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country, to look at America? I cannot.
Here’s the truth: The election of 2020 was the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country. More of you voted in that election than have ever voted in all of American history. Over 150 million Americans went to the polls and voted that day, in a pandemic, some at great risk to their lives. And they should be applauded, not attacked.
Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written not to protect the vote, but to deny it – not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it. Not to strengthen and protect our democracy, but because the former president lost instead of looking at the election results in 2020, and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes. The former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections. It’s wrong. It’s undemocratic. And frankly, it’s un-American.
The second ‘Big Lie’ being told by the former president’s supporters is that the results of the election of 2020 can’t be trusted. The truth is that no election, no election in American history has been more closely scrutinised or more carefully counted.
Every legal challenge questioning the results in every court in this country that could have been made was made and was rejected. Often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself. From state courts to the United States Supreme Court, recounts were undertaken in state after state.
Georgia, Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand. Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results.
In some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly. So let’s speak plainly about what happened in 2020.
Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn’t based in the facts. He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover for the truth. He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.
Defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes. In a full and free and fair election. There is simply zero proof the election results are inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced, an oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case. Just think about this: The former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate other election results that took place on November 3rd. Elections for governor, United States Senate, House of Representatives, elections in which they closed the gap in the House.
They challenged none of that. The president’s name was first. Then we went down the line: governor, senators, House of Representatives, somehow those results are accurate on the same ballot. But the presidential race was flawed. And on the same ballot, same day, cast by the same voters. The only difference: The former president didn’t lose those races. He just lost the one that was his own.
Finally, the third ‘Big Lie’ being told by a former president and his supporters is that the mob who sought to impose their will through violence are the nation’s true patriots. Is that what you thought when you looked at the mob, ransacking the Capitol, destroying property, literally defecating in the hallways, rifling through the desks of senators and representatives, hunting down members of Congress? Patriots? Not in my view.
To me, the true patriots are the more than 150 Americans who peacefully expressed their vote at the ballot box, the election workers for protecting the integrity of the vote and the heroes who defended this Capitol. You can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t obey the law only when it’s convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.
Those who stormed this Capitol and those who instigated and incited and those who called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America and American democracy. They didn’t come here out of patriotism or principle. They came here in rage – not in service of America, rather in service of one man. Those who incited the mob, the real plotters who were desperate to deny the certification of this election, to defy the will of the voters, their plot was foiled. Congress, Democrats, Republicans stayed. Senators, representatives, staff, they finished their work the Constitution demanded. They honoured their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Now it’s up to all of us – we, the people – to stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive. The promise is at risk, targeted by the forces that value brute strength over the sanctity of democracy, fear over hope, personal gain over public good. Make no mistake about it, we’re living at an inflection point in history, both at home and abroad.
As we stand here today, one year since January 6, 2021, the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw in this place, they have not abated. So we have to be firm, resolute and unyielding in our defence of the right to vote and to have that vote counted.”  — Reuters