President Joe Biden, leaning heavily on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as campaign fodder stepped up his rhetoric against former President Donald Trump and millions of his supporters Monday by comparing them to Confederates who embraced the "lost cause" that the Civil War was about state's rights and not slavery.
"After the Civil War, the defeated Confederates could not accept the verdict of the war they had lost, so they embraced what's known as the lost cause," Biden said during a campaign stop at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, site of a racially motivated mass shooting in 2005.
"It's a self-serving lie that the Civil War was not about slavery but about state's rights," Biden said. "They have called that the noble cause. That was a lie. It was a lie that had terrible consequences. It brought on Jim Crow. Let me be clear, for those who don't seem to know, slavery was the cause of the Civil War. There is no negotiation about that."
Biden, who did not mention that Jim Crow laws were established and maintained for nearly a century by southern Democrats, said Americans are now living in an era of a second lost cause regarding the 2020 presidential election, which Trump said he won, citing massive voter fraud.
"There are some in this country that are trying to turn a loss into a lie," he said. "A lie, which if allowed to live, will once again bring terrible damage to this country. This time, the lie is about the 2020 election."
Biden's 2020 campaign took flight after winning the South Carolina primary, and the state will kick off this year's Democrat primary scheduled Feb. 3.
Biden's speech Monday came three days after a speech near Valley Forge in Pennsylvania where his focus was on the events of Jan. 6. Biden called Trump a threat to democracy whose refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election led to the violence of that day.
Biden, who did not mention Trump by name throughout Monday's speech, said an extreme movement of "MAGA Republicans led by a defeated president" is trying to steal history by saying "that violent mob" was a peaceful protest and the "insurrectionists" were patriots.
"We must reject political violence in America," Biden said. "Always. Not sometimes. Always. It's never appropriate. The violence on Jan. 6 was an extension of an old playbook."
Biden said losers are taught to concede when they lose, and Trump "is a loser."
The president also mischaracterized what Trump said during a campaign speech in Iowa on Friday about a recent mass school shooting in that state that left an 11-year-old dead and several other students and staff injured.
"It's hard to believe. You know what his response was?" Biden said. "All those kids dead. We have to get over it."
What Trump did say after expressing condolences, love and prayers for the victims was, "We have to get over it. We have to move forward. To all the relatives, and all the people who are devastated right now, to the point they can't breathe, they can't live, we are with you all the way. We love you and cherish you."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.