"For all of the criticism that they have leveled against Donald Trump unfairly, they were the cheerleaders, fundraisers and apologists for the people who burned our cities, attacked our police and were on offense against the very notion of America for months this summer," Gaetz said.
"They don't want to account for that. Joe Biden doesn't want to answer for it. Certainly, Kamala Harris doesn't." (Related: BOMBSHELL: Organization funding BLM, Antifa terrorism linked to Biden campaign.)
He also accused Biden’s incoming administration of positioning itself to use national security tools against political opponents.
"We should take note of the language that the left is using — chemical warfare, insurrection, domestic terrorism. There are exquisite authorities in our national laws that allow our government to do things to terrorists that we would never allow against our own people," Gaetz said.
"But in the incoming Biden administration, they want to use national security authorities against MAGA. They're targeting Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Madison Cawthorn and myself because we had the nerve to actually stand up and point out the need for election integrity."
MAGA refers to Make America Great Again, a campaign slogan popularized by Trump that has evolved and turned into a movement supporting the president.
Gaetz claimed Biden and the Democrats will go after Trump and his allies and he said: "They're going to use national security authorities that you should never use against our fellow Americans."
The lawmaker was one of the first to defend Trump following the Capitol riots on Jan. 6.
"This morning, President Trump explicitly called for demonstrations and protests to be peaceful. He was far more – you can moan and groan – but he was far more explicit about his calls for peace than some of the BLM and left-wing rioters were this summer when we saw violence sweep across this nation," Gaetz said on the House floor hours after the Capitol attack.
Biden had some interesting descriptions for the Capitol rioters.
"They weren't protesters. Don't dare call them protesters,” he said. “They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It's that basic. It's that simple,"
He then recalled a text conversation he'd had with his granddaughter about how differently law enforcement officers treated the rioters from how they treated Black Lives Matters protesters during summer demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.
"No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol," he said. "We all know that's true. And it's unacceptable. Totally unacceptable."
Biden said both parties agreed the people involved in the Capitol attack should be punished.
“I think it is critically important there be a real serious focus on holding those folks who engaged in sedition and threatened people's lives, defacing public property, caused great damage, that they be held accountable. I think that's the view held by the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans in the Congress,” he said.
Additional security measures have been put into place at the Capitol ahead of Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Seven-foot anti-climbing fences were installed around the Capitol complex, surrounding it in a ring of steel.
National Guard units have arrived to help guard the building through the inauguration. The head of the National Guard said at least 10,000 troops will be deployed in Washington, D.C. and an additional 5,000 could be requested from other states.
Biden told reporters that he wasn't afraid of holding his inauguration ceremony outside despite the mounting threats. "I'm not afraid of taking the oath outside," he said.
With the national security authorities at his command, there’s no reason for him to be afraid.
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