Nothing like this has happened since Civil War: Biden on US Capitol attack

US President Joe Biden has described the events of January 6 as something that did not happen since the Civil War.

On January 6, 2021, a mob of the then US president Donald Trump's supporters stormed Capitol Hill here and clashed with police just as the Congress had convened to validate Biden's presidential win.

Nothing like this has happened since the Civil War. I don't want to exaggerate. But literally, nothing like this has happened since the Civil War (1861-1865), Biden told reporters at a news conference here on Wednesday.

Responding to questions, he said if the United States tomorrow were to withdraw from the world, a lot of things would change around the world. A whole lot would change.

So, they're very concerned that we are still the open democracy we've been and that we have rules and the institutions matter. That's the context in which I think that they're looking at: Are we back to a place where we are going to accept decisions made by the Court, by the Congress, by the government, et cetera? he said.

Biden said MAGA Republicans' are a minority of the Republican Party. I think the vast majority of the members of the Republican Party, we disagree strongly on issues, but they're decent, honorable people. We have differences of agreement on issues.

I worked with a lot of these folks in the Senate and the House for a long time. They are honest, and they're straightforward. They're different than mine, but they're decent folks, he said.

And so, I think that the rest of the world is looking at the United States. I guess the best way to say this is to repeat what some of you've heard me say before, he noted.

The first G7 meeting -- I sat down at a roundtable with the six other world leaders from the European Union, the .and said, America is back. And one of them turned to me and said, For how long? For how long? It was a deadly earnest question: For how long?, he said.

And I looked at them. And then another one went on to say -- and I'm not going to name them -- went on to say, What would you say, Joe, if, in fact, you went -- we went to bed tonight here in -- in England, woke up the next morning and found out that thousands of people had stormed the parliament of Great Britain -- gone down the hall, broken down the doors, two cops ended up dying, a number of people injured, and they tried to stop the co- -- the confirmation of an election? It's not the same situation, obviously, as we have. And he said, What would you think? Biden said.

And what -- I ask a rhetorical question: What would you all think? You'd think England was really in trouble. You'd think democracy was on the edge if that happened in Great Britain. And so, that's the way people were looking at us, like, When is this going to stop? Nothing like this has happened since the Civil War. I don't want to exaggerate. But literally, nothing like this has happened since the Civil War, he said about the January 6 events.