President Biden claims Jan. 6th Capitol riot “was about white supremacy”

President Joe Biden said Thursday that white supremacy motivated the rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and accused former president Trump of appealing to racists.

“The violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago, it was about white supremacy, in my opinion,” Biden said of the Jan. 6 riot, during a speech acknowledging the 10-year anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington. “You know, there’s a tough through-line of subjugation of enslaved people from our earliest days to the reigns of radicalized terror of the KKK to Dr. King being assassinated,” Biden went onto say.

“And through that though, that line continues to be torturous, emerging from dark shadows in Charlottesville, carrying out Nazi banners, and chanting antisemitic bile and Ku Klux Klan flags, and the violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago, it was about white supremacy, in my view,” he concluded.

In March, FBI Director Christopher Wray said some of those arrested were classified under “militia violent extremism,” pointing to members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Others were “racially motivated violent extremists, specifically advocating for the superiority of the white race,” Wray said.

Biden also remarked on the lack of progress for passing police reform legislation in Congress. “I know the frustration we all feel, that more than one year after George Floyd’s murder, and the conviction of his murderer about six months ago, meaningful police reform in George’s name has still not passed Congress,” he said. Biden said he intends to continue fighting for “real police reform legislation.”