WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump continued to insist during a nationally televised speech on Tuesday that he… presidential debate that he had won the 2020 election and still failed to take responsibility for the chaos that unfolded on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitolwhen his supporters stormed the building to block the peaceful transfer of power.
The comments underscored the Republican’s refusal, even four years later, to accept the reality of his defeat and his unwillingness to acknowledge the extent to which his lies about his election loss emboldened the mob that stormed the Capitol, resulting in violent clashes with law enforcement. It also made clear that Trump’s grievances over 2020 remain central to his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as he continues to express loyalty to the rioters.
When asked twice if he regretted anything he did on January 6, when he called on his supporters to march on the Capitol and urged them to “fight like hell,” Trump initially responded by complaining that the questioner had failed to notice that he had encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully and patriotically” and by noting that one of his supporters, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot inside the building by a Capitol Police officer.
He also suggested that protesters who committed crimes during the 2020 protests against racial injustice not be prosecuted. But a 2021 Associated Press review Documents in more than 300 federal cases stemming from the protests following the death of George Floyd show that more than 120 defendants across the U.S. have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial of federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy.
When the question about his actions on January 6 was raised again, he replied, “I had nothing to do with it, except that they asked me to make a speech. I showed up to make a speech.”
But he ignored other inflammatory language he used during the speech, in which he urged the crowd to march to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. Trump told the crowd: “If you don’t fight like hell, you don’t have a country anymore.” That was after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, declared: “Let’s have a trial by fighting.”
Trump didn’t call on rioters to leave the Capitol until more than three hours after the attack began. He subsequently released a video telling rioters it was time to “go home,” but added: “We love you. You are very special people.”
He also repeated an oft-repeated, false claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had “rejected” his offer to send “10,000 National Guardsmen or soldiers” to the Capitol. Pelosi is not leading the National GuardWhen the Capitol was attacked, she and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for military assistance, including the National Guard.
Harris, for her part, vowed to turn the page since January 6, when she was at the Capitol as democracy came under attack.
“So to everyone watching, who remembers what January 6th was, I say, ‘We don’t have to go back. Let’s not go back. We’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page.’”
Trump’s false claims extended to his loss in the 2020 election. Dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own Attorney General has said there was no evidence that fraud affected the outcome or that the election was stolen.
Although Trump appeared to acknowledge in a recent podcast interview that he had indeed “lost by a hair’s breadth,” he insisted on Tuesday evening that this was a sarcastic remark and resumed his election bragging.
“I’ll show you Georgia, and I’ll show you Wisconsin, and I’ll show you Pennsylvania,” he said, listing states where he falsely claimed he had won. “I’ll show you we have so many facts and statistics.”
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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Melissa Goldin contributed to this report.