Trump cancels press conference on Thursday, a year after the assault on Capitol Hill

The remote confrontation with President Joe Biden will not occur: the ex-president Donald Trump made a 180-degree turn on Tuesday by forgoing a press conference scheduled for Thursday, just a year after his supporters took for assault on Capitol, the seat of the United States Congress.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Trump affirmed that he will speak on January 15, at a rally in Arizona (west), and again denounced the “fraud” that, he affirms without any proof, tarnished the last presidential elections in 2020, in the he was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden by seven million votes difference.

“It was the crime of the century,” wrote the Republican magnate about those elections.

Trump has not given a clear explanation for the cancellation of the press conference he planned to hold from his luxurious residence in Florida (southeast).

He alleged that he resigned to carry it out “in light of the total partiality and dishonesty” of the parliamentary commission that investigates his role and that of his environment in this attack that has traumatized the United States and left five dead.

The Republican also lashed out at the media that he calls “Fake News”, one of his favorite targets.

Thursday’s press conference would have coincided with a moment of recollection in Congress in Washington, which critics of the former president would consider one more provocation on his part.

The prospect of this speech also seemed to embarrass Republicans, who Trump continues to have a lot of influence over. Most of the party’s supporters believe that the last presidential election was “a robbery.”

“It can be said that Trump’s behavior is unprecedented in American history. No former president has attempted to this extent to discredit his successor and the democratic process, “says Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

– Biden’s speech-

Trump’s turn clears the way for Biden, who will speak Thursday from the Capitol, where thousands of supporters of his rival tried violently to prevent Congress from certifying his election on January 6.

“He will speak about the work that remains to be done to secure and strengthen our democracy and our institutions, to reject the hatred and lies we saw on January 6, to unite the country,” his spokesperson Jen Psaki said Tuesday.

Since he was elected, he has been reluctant to face the “other guy” or the “old guy” head-on, the formulas used by Biden and the White House to avoid naming the Republican tycoon, whom, perhaps, he will have to confront. again in the presidential elections of 2024.

Officially, Biden intends to run again as a candidate and the Republican implies that the same task is being considered.

For Lara Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University, “the president and vice president (Kamala) Harris cannot enter this terrain” of direct verbal attack “because they do not want to give the impression of a ‘witch hunt'” orchestrated by the White House, as Trump repeatedly says in public.

– “Naive” –

“The Biden administration thought that by making the right political decisions, all of this would go away, but I think that’s being naive,” the expert added.

According to Biden, the best way to counter Trump would be to reconcile the American middle class with representative democracy, guaranteeing them jobs, purchasing power and serenity in the face of globalization.

But the president is slow to achieve the expected results: the United States suffers a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences, its social reforms are blocked in Congress, the cost of living rises …

Rachel Bitecofer, a strategist close to the Democratic field, believes that Biden should take on Trump and the Republican Party more directly.

Faced with a Trump who has just endorsed in a statement the controversial far-right leader and Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, ahead of the April elections in that country, “we must be very frank about what that means,” he said.

It is, according to Bitecofer, a way for the former president to convey “what he wants for the United States and it is not a democratic future.”

But “there is reluctance to recognize how strong the right wing attack on democracy is,” he says.

“The current threats against democracy are real and worrying,” said Carl Tobias, but added that “the United States has overcome much more dangerous crises, especially the Civil War.”