Summary of the day
Today, Biden delivered an impassioned speech ahead of the third anniversary of January 6. Speaking at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge, Biden asked the question, “is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”, underscoring his 2024 campaign’s theme of the importance of preserving democracy.
In his speech, Biden also condemned all forms of political violence, recounting not just the 6 Jan insurrection, when the US capitol was attacked by an angry mob ahead of Biden’s inauguration, but other incidents such as the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic house speaker Nanci Pelosi, who was beat with a hammer in their San Francisco home.
“Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States,” Biden said. “It has no place in a democracy. You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.”
Due to his role in the 6 January insurrection, Trump has been removed from GOP primary ballots in two states: Colorado and Maine. But conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh will “step up” for the former president against efforts to remove him from ballots, a Trump lawyer has said. On Friday, the US supreme court agreed to consider whether Trump could be deemed ineligible to run for federal office again because of his actions. Trump remains the Republican frontrunner in national polls ahead of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
Ahead of his trial on corruption charges, the longtime National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre will leave his post, the gun rights association announced on Friday. LaPierre and other executives stand accused of illegally diverting tens of millions of dollars from the NRA and spending organization funds on personal trips and other questionable expenditures.
The Iowa caucus is a mere 10 days away. In an interview following an Iowa town hall with NBC’s Dasha Burns and the Des Moines Register, the Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley expressed regret yet again for botching answers to questions about race. First, she apologized for not mentioning slavery when discussing the civil war in a town hall earlier this week. But in her apology, she said she assumed slavery was a given in any conversation about the civil war and that she “had Black friends growing up”. Burns told Haley her response was criticized as tokenism or a trope. The issue brought to the forefront the role race will play in this election. Not only would Haley be the first female president, but the first south Asian president.
That’s it for this liveblog. Thanks for reading.
Updated
In the same NBC interview, Haley was questioned on botching her responses to questions surrounding race.
Haley again made clear she should have mentioned slavery when answering a question about the US civil war posed to her in a town hall earlier this week, rather than saying the war was primarily about “the role of government and what the rights of the people are”.
In a CNN town hall after the incident, Haley slipped up again. Backtracking on her previous comments about the civil war, Haley said: “I should have said slavery right off the bat. When you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery. You grow up and you have – I had Black friends growing up.”
“In South Carolina ... you grow up ... you know, I had Black friends growing up. It is a very talked-about thing.”
— The Recount (@therecount) January 5, 2024
— Nikki Haley at a CNN town hall says she “should have said slavery” in her viral response to a question about the Civil War, but said in her mind, “that’s a given” pic.twitter.com/lPCkRAbPLL
Haley’s comments were condemned as tokenism.
When asked about the two gaffes in conversation about race, Haley told NBC’s Dasha Burns “how hard it was to grow up in the deep south a as a brown girl”.
She recalled the isolating experience of being the only Indian family to grow up in their small town in South Carolina. She recounted a story when she was excluded from a beauty pageant for not being white or Black.
“Saying that I had Black friends is a source of pride.”
Updated
