Joe Biden is using the opening pages of his new memoir to put President Donald Trump back on trial over January 6.
And he is not being subtle about it.
In the first published excerpt from Promise Me, America, Biden declares that Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 “should follow him to his grave.”
That is an extraordinary line from a former president who spent years promising to lower the temperature in American politics.
The Atlantic published the excerpt ahead of the memoir’s November 17 release. Biden presents his post-presidency as a fight over democracy and revisits Trump’s decision to grant clemency to more than 1,500 January 6 defendants.
He also attacks the Supreme Court’s presidential-immunity ruling and argues that Congress failed to impose sufficient consequences on Trump. The excerpt makes clear that Biden wants January 6—instead of inflation, the border, Afghanistan, or his own administration’s record—to serve as the moral center of his legacy.
That choice tells Americans plenty about the book Biden wants to sell.
It also raises a question Biden cannot avoid: If January 6 was supposed to end Trump’s political career, why did voters send Trump back to the White House?
Trump did not sneak back into power. He ran openly, defended his record, campaigned across the country, and won.
Biden can condemn that verdict, but he cannot erase it.
The Associated Press reports that the memoir also describes a roughly two-hour Oval Office meeting between Biden and Trump after the 2024 election. According to Biden’s account, Trump told him the two men might have been good friends in a world without their political rivalry.
Biden presents the encounter as personally cordial while continuing to describe Trump as politically dangerous. The book reportedly combines those private scenes with a wider defense of Biden’s presidency and sharp criticism of the institutions he believes failed to stop Trump.
That private meeting is worth remembering.
Americans are constantly told that Trump is beyond the pale. Yet the same political class that uses apocalyptic language about him still meets with him, negotiates with him, and acknowledges his command of the Republican coalition.
The public rhetoric is absolute. The private reality is often more complicated.
Biden’s attack also lands while he is dealing with serious health problems. In announcing the book, he said he would be unable to do as many interviews as he had hoped, though he said his doctors were encouraged by his response to cancer treatment.
We genuinely wish him strength in that fight.
But compassion for a former president’s health does not require pretending his political argument is beyond challenge.
The Washington Sun notes that Biden uses the memoir to condemn both Trump’s January 6 clemency decisions and the Supreme Court ruling that recognized broad immunity for official presidential acts. Those are legitimate subjects for debate.
But Biden’s framing leaves little room for the millions of voters who viewed the prosecutions, lengthy sentences, and years of political spectacle very differently. For them, Trump’s return was a rejection of the establishment’s attempt to define the entire political era through one day.
That is the part Biden appears unwilling to confront.
Democrats spent years telling Americans that supporting Trump made them a threat to democracy. They deployed prosecutors, congressional committees, cable-news panels, and celebrity surrogates to make that message unavoidable.
Trump survived all of it.
He survived two impeachments, multiple indictments, a criminal conviction, an assassination attempt, and a political machine determined to finish him.
Then the voters made their own decision.
Biden is entitled to write his version of history. He is entitled to believe Trump’s January 6 conduct should define him forever.
But the country has already delivered a competing verdict.
Trump’s opponents wanted January 6 to be the final page of his political story.
Instead, it became one chapter on the road back to the White House.
The post Biden’s New Memoir Attacks Trump Over January 6: It “Should Follow Him To His Grave” appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
