Biden Reminds Police Memorial Audience Of Trump’s Jan. 6 Incitement, Officers' Deaths

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden at a police officers’ memorial ceremony Wednesday again honored the officers who died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, part of his predecessor’s coup attempt.

“We remember all of our law enforcement who defended our Capitol and our democracy on that terrible day,” Biden said at the annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service on the Capitol building’s west lawn.

Biden did not mention former president Donald Trump by name, but by praising police for their work on Jan. 6 was able to draw a clear contrast nevertheless.

Trump, whose weeks of lies about the 2020 election having been “stolen” from him, culminating with a pre-coup rally near the White House, never praises the 140 Capitol and Washington, D.C., police officers who were injured by his mob that day, nor the five who died in the coming days and weeks, four of them by suicide.

Instead, Trump regularly glorifies those who assaulted police on his behalf on Jan. 6, and he’s offered convicted rioters pardons if he wins. The presumptive GOP nominee often opens his campaign events by standing at attention and saluting as he plays a recording of incarcerated Jan. 6 attackers as they sing the national anthem, interspersed with Trump’s reading of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Biden has previously honored officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. He gave a number of them the Presidential Citizens Medal in a White House ceremony on the second anniversary of that day.

In speeches, he has frequently thanked them for saving American democracy. As president-elect, he attended a memorial service for officer Brian Sicknick, who died hours after being assaulted at the Capitol. And as president, he signed legislation extending