US President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a Christmas address from the White House, wishing an increasingly divided US a “fresh start,” including a purge of “the poison that has infected our politics and set us against one another.”
Biden has in the past few months taken a more aggressive stance against opposition Republicans, but with Christmas just three days away, his holiday message centered on themes of reconciliation and unity.
“My hope this Christmas season is that we take a few moments of quiet reflection, find that stillness ... at the heart of Christmas and really look at each other,” Biden said from a festive White House decked out with trees, garlands and white lights.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Not as Democrats or Republicans. Not as members of Team Red or Team Blue, but as who we really are, fellow Americans, fellow human beings worthy of being treated with dignity and respect,” he said.
The 80-year-old early in his term spoke often about the need for reconciliation amid the discord left in the wake of the administration of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Returning to that topic, the ardent Catholic delivered a message of empathy and calm.
Photo: Reuters
“No one can ever know what someone else is going through, what’s really going on in their lives,” Biden said, inviting Americans to “spread a little kindness” this Christmas.
Fifty years ago, Biden lost his first wife and baby daughter in a vehicle accident shortly before Christmas.
He reminded Americans that in addition to joy, “Christmas can be a time of great pain and terrible loneliness.”
The president has recently gained some valuable political momentum, including diplomatic and legislative successes, as well as midterm elections that turned out better for Democrats than forecast.
He is expected to early next month make a much-anticipated decision on whether he would run again for president in 2024 after discussing his future over the holidays with his family.
Biden’s Christmas message came hours after a congressional panel probing the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6 last year released its final report, outlining its case that Trump should face criminal charges of inciting the deadly riot in the wake of his election defeat in November 2020.
The US House of Representatives Select Committee earlier on Thursday and on Wednesday also made public the transcripts of a number of its interviews and witness testimonies.
The report, which runs to more than 800 pages, is based on nearly 1,200 interviews over 18 months and hundreds of thousands of documents, as well as the rulings of more than 60 federal and state courts.
“Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome,” the House panel said in a 160-page summary of the report that it released earlier.
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