WASHINGTON – Faith will help the nation survive this “dark, dark time,” President Joe Biden said in a recorded message Thursday for the National Prayer Breakfast that was as notable for who wasn’t featured as who was.
Presidents have addressed for nearly seven decades the breakfast held virtually this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The five living former presidents sent written or filmed messages for Thursday’s event – with one notable exception.
There were no contemporary remarks from former President Donald Trump, who has been impeached for inciting the deadly riot on the Capitol last month.
“We know now we must confront and defeat political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism,” Biden said in his remarks. “For so many in our nation, this is a dark, dark time. So where do we turn? Faith.”
Biden, the second Catholic president, said his faith provides hope and solace, clarity and purpose.
“It shows the way forward, as one nation in a common purpose, to respect one another, to care for one another, to leave no one behind,” he said. Biden said that common purpose must be applied to addressing the health, economic and climate crises facing the nation and to no longer deferring the dream of “justice for all.”
“We just have to open our eyes,” Biden said, when talking about the “violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, an assault on our democracy…that threatened lives and took lives.”
The Senate begins next week a trial to determine whether to convict Trump of the latest impeachment charge against him.
Trump used last year’s National Prayer Breakfast to take a victory lap over the Senate’s dismissal of the 2019 impeachment charges that he abused power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival, then obstructed Congress in an effort to cover it up.
As Trump entered the 2020 breakfast, he waved a copy of USA TODAY, which ran the headline “ACQUITTED,” and a copy of The Washington Post headlined “Trump Acquitted.”
Thursday’s virtual breakfast did not include that appearance in clips from past presidential remarks aired at the beginning of the event.
Instead, Trump was shown offering in 2017 his vision for a “more just and peaceful world where every child can grow up without violence, worship without fear and reach their God-given potential.”
“Let us resolve,” Trump said, “to find the best within ourselves.”
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Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/04/biden-emphasizes-faith-national-prayer-breakfast-without-trump/4386769001/
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