President Biden warned Americans not to forget the violent attack that took place at the Capitol four years ago, and he accused President-elect Donald J. Trump and his supporters of trying “to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day.”
The warning came on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, in which hundreds of Mr. Trump’s supporters swarmed into the building as lawmakers were preparing to certify the results of Mr. Biden’s victory.
The assault led to the deaths of several people and federal convictions for hundreds of rioters. But Mr. Trump has repeatedly argued that the attackers were patriots and has called Jan. 6 “a beautiful day” because his supporters were acting on his behalf.
The scene at the Capitol on Monday was starkly different. After a significant snowstorm, few people gathered outside as Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the certification of Mr. Trump’s return to power.
For Democrats, the difference was the point. Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and their allies had argued that Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021 — and his embrace of the attackers in the years since — made him unqualified to hold office again. Ms. Harris said in a video posted to social media on Monday that she was doing her job.
“Today, I will perform my constitutional duty as vice president to certify the results of the 2024 election,” she said. “This duty is a sacred obligation — one I will uphold guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and my unwavering faith in the American people.”
Since Election Day, Mr. Biden has focused on ensuring a smooth and orderly transition of power — something that Mr. Trump refused to deliver as he was leaving office at the end of his first term. But on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, Mr. Biden addressed the issue directly.
“To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes,” he wrote in The Washington Post. “To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.”
“This is not what happened,” he wrote.
At a reception for members of Congress on Sunday evening, the president echoed his essay in remarks, saying that democracy had been “literally put to the test” and talking about the challenge of protecting it.
It was hardly the first time Mr. Biden had urged people to remember what happened on that violent day. But the certification of Mr. Trump as the 47th president was a stark reminder that Mr. Biden’s warnings went largely unheeded.
In 2022, a year after the Capitol assault, Mr. Biden stood in the building’s Statuary Hall to condemn the marauding mob that had tried to stop the certification of his victory. He denounced Mr. Trump’s actions as president on that day.
“At this moment,” Mr. Biden declared, “we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be?”
In November, Americans delivered their answer. Three years after Mr. Biden’s speech, Mr. Trump’s return to office was affirmed by Congress on Monday.
In the days and weeks since the election, Mr. Biden did not dwell on his warnings about the fate of democracy. Two days after the election, he said he had congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory and offered an optimistic assessment.
“The American experiment endures, and we’re going to be OK,” Mr. Biden said.
The next week, Mr. Biden met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office for two hours. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the president had instructed his staff to do what Mr. Trump had refused to do four years earlier: Be gracious.
“The president respects the will of the American people and wants to make sure that occurs,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.
That message rankled some of Mr. Biden’s supporters, who viewed it as a jarring contrast to the repeated warnings that a Trump victory would be an existential threat to freedoms in the United States.
But the president’s aides and allies said Mr. Biden’s approach was consistent with the 50 years he spent in public life as an institutionalist, often expressing reverence for the norms and traditions that had long existed in the nation’s capital.
On Monday, Mr. Biden left Washington just after the votes were certified for Mr. Trump. He was to visit New Orleans, offering solace to the victims of a terrorist attack in the city on Jan. 1.
Near the end of his essay in The Post, Mr. Biden struck a bipartisan note.
“I have invited the incoming president to the White House on the morning of Jan. 20, and I will be present for his inauguration that afternoon,” the president wrote. “But on this day, we cannot forget. This is what we owe those who founded this nation, those who have fought for it and died for it.”
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