Biden memoir says Trump should carry weight of January 6 riots ‘to his grave’

The 83-year-old Democrat said the the Republican president’s years of lies about his 2020 defeat to Mr Biden and the January 6 attacks on the Capitol should “follow him to his grave”.

Mr Biden’s sweeping indictment comes in the first excerpt from Promise Me, America, published on Monday by The Atlantic.

The 46th president’s full memoir is set for a November 17 release. Mr Biden said that while doctors are encouraged by his response to cancer treatment, his activities promoting the book will be limited because of his health.

“Donald Trump led an insurrection,” he wrote of the attack by Trump supporters as the US Congress met to certify the 2020 election won by the Democrat. “His goal was to remain in power after the American people had voted him out of office.

“The rioters weren’t peaceful protesters,” he wrote. “They came armed to stop the official certification of a legitimate election.”

He also condemned Mr Trump, 80, for later issuing more than 1,500 pardons for the offenders.

“To this day, Trump and his supporters continue to preen and posture like they’re supporters of law enforcement,” Mr Biden wrote.

“Here’s my view: You don’t get to turn a blind eye to cops being punched, speared, sprayed and brutalised and call yourself a friend of law enforcement. What Trump did on January 6 2021 should never be forgotten. It should follow him to his grave.”

He also criticised Mr Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and his aggressive reversal of many of Mr Biden’s policies, especially those intended to address climate change.

“All presidents must confront a feeling that their legacy is vulnerable to the pendulum of politics and the whims of their successors,” Mr Biden wrote.

“In my case, that feeling was magnified by the dismissive and destructive nature of Donald Trump, who seemed unable to tolerate the idea that someone else’s accomplishments might be worth building on rather than tearing down.”

The memoir’s release comes after Mr Biden’s fellow Democrats trounced Republicans in the midterm elections, securing stunningly broad House and Senate majorities and flipping control of several statehouses in a comprehensive rebuke of Mr Trump’s second presidency.

But the president’s return to power two years earlier was itself a rejection of Mr Biden’s one White House term, and many voters still harbour sceptical views of his presidency and his party.

In a lengthy social media post on Sunday, Mr Biden pitched his memoir as the best way he can explain his presidency, “the challenges we faced, the decisions I made and why I made them”.

During his four years in office, Mr Biden confronted the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, and he worked to restore global alliances that Mr Trump had frayed, but he faced widespread concerns about his age and abandoned his re-election bid after a disastrous June 2024 debate with Mr Trump.

Dogged by lingering inflation and other concerns, Mr Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, lost to Mr Trump that November.

Months after leaving office, Mr Biden announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He spoke about his condition in his Sunday social media post, saying he “won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped” and urging people to let the book speak for him.

He said his doctors “continue to be encouraged by how I’ve responded to treatment”, but added: “Some days are better than others. It hasn’t stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down.”

In the excerpt, Mr Biden recounts an unusual Oval Office meeting with Mr Trump days after the 2020 election — well before the January 6 riots.

“‘You know, Joe, if it weren’t for politics, I believe we’d be good friends’,” Mr Trump said, according to Mr Biden.

Mr Trump even commented “that he’d been relieved he didn’t have to run against me”, Mr Biden added.

Public polling at the time Mr Biden dropped his re-election bid showed him trailing Mr Trump, and Democrats pushed for him to yield out of fear that he could not win.

Mr Biden said he used the meeting to give Mr Trump “a tour of the world”, including the Ukraine-Russia war, Nato alliances, Israel and Gaza and China-US relations.

The Democrat said Mr Trump “focused on the personalities” of world leaders rather than the substance of international relations.

He said that two-hour meeting left him worried Mr Trump would dismantle much of his presidency. He wrote that Mr Trump’s opening weeks — his Day One executive orders and everything that followed — confirmed his worries about a “crueler government” that “tried to tear down institutions and inflame hatreds” and a president who “took a wrecking ball to our traditions”.