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President Biden on Thursday signed a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to police forces who fought rioters on Capitol Hill on January 6 – while bizarrely comparing officers to student-athletes who fight crowds who “fight them off”. jump ”in rival high schools.
Biden called the frenzied crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump “extremists and terrorists” and said “we cannot allow history to be rewritten.”
But the president also attempted to salute the officers for their bravery with a startling comparison to what he said were the type of people he knew in his hometowns of Scranton, Pa., And Claymont, Delaware. .
“All kidding aside, I got to know you,” Biden told officers at the White House Rose Garden event.
“You are the same after a football match in a visiting field that come out of the gymnasium after winning and you can get blown up by the other team or their supporters. You might be all alone, the only one standing there, watching six people jump one of our teammates. What the hell would you do? You would jump in, you would jump in, knowing that you were going to get beaten up in hell too. “
Concluding the head-turning analogy, Biden said, “A cop is not what you do, it’s who you are.”
The bill signed by Biden awards the Congressional Gold Medal to the United States Capitol Police and the DC Metropolitan Police Department for fighting the Trump supporters who crashed into the Capitol and disrupted the certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
A Senate version of the legislation would have given a Congressional Gold Medal specifically to Capitol Hill Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who drove the first wave of pro-Trump rioters away from an unsecured Senate door. Rioters then broke into the Senate Chamber – at least two of them armed with plastic handcuffs.
The Senate voted unanimously in February to bestow the award on Goodman after an emotional day of litigation in Trump’s impeachment trial for allegedly inciting a riot. But Congress ultimately opted for a version pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Who did not bestow the award on any particular officer.
In the rose garden, Biden acknowledged the death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke after fighting the crowds, and the death by suicide of several officers who were on Capitol Hill that day- the.
At one point in his remarks, Biden appeared to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“My fellow Americans, let’s remember what it was about. It was a violent attempt to overthrow the will of the American people, to seek power at all costs, to replace the ballot with brute force, ”he said.
“It breaks my heart. It breaks the heart of the nation to remember that you were assaulted by thousands of violent insurgents on the United States of America Capitol,” Biden said.
“In my opinion, the dead are victims in a struggle for the soul of America. A fight that they did not start, a fight that we did not seek and a fight that by the grace of God we will win.
Biden said Democrats and Republicans should work together “to restore decency, honor and respect to our system of government.”
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