On January 6 of this year, about-to-be-former president Donald Trump took to a stage outside the White House and whipped-up a massive crowd of already enraged supporters, who’d been fed lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election (that they continue to spread, over a year later). A large portion of them proceeded to bust their way into the Capitol building, leading to five deaths. Whether Trump’s speech directly inspired the violent siege has been hotly debated. But Trump seems to think his fiery rhetoric was actually pretty chill.
Trump: I have nothing to hide. I wasn’t involved with that and if you look at my words and what I said in the speech, they were extremely calming pic.twitter.com/KNW5EVgnAV
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 11, 2021
Trump phoned into Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show Friday night, and she asked him about his attempts to deflect participating in the Jan. 6 House committee, who have been investigating that day’s events, by invoking “executive privilege.” (Some of his allies, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, have done the same thing, even though that that rule only applies to sitting presidents.) Trump suggested that even if they made him talk, it would still go swimmingly for him.
“Honestly, I have nothing to hide,” Trump told Ingraham. He claimed he “wasn’t involved” in the insurrection, and even painted his pre-siege speech as the opposite of impassioned. “And if you look at my words and what I said in the speech, they were extremely calming, actually.”
Among the things Trump said in his hour-long soliloquy were, “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
During his appearance on Ingraham’s show, Trump also continued to downplay the insurrection. “The insurrection took place on Nov. 3, which was Election Day,” Trump asserted. “This was a protest, and a lot of innocent people are being hurt. A lot of innocent people are being injured.”
He even dramatically lowered the day’s body count while comparing it to Black Lives Matter protests over the preceding summer (where very few people died over hundreds of protests nationwide). “Nobody was killed here other than Ashli Babbitt, who was shot violently by a man who should not have ever been allowed to pull that trigger,” he said. (Five people died that day, not one.)
In the meantime, the Jan. 6 committee continues interviewing hundreds of people, a good many of them who did so willingly. And we’re still learning about some of the perpetrators, including one who claimed he strolled through the Capitol building while pounding Coors Light — which may have been a lie.
(Via Raw Story)
Source: https://uproxx.com/viral/trump-jan-6-speech-extremely-calming/
