During a segment on Fox News Sunday, former President Donald Trump defended his mob of his loyalists who attacked the United States Capitol building on January 6 following an incendiary speech he gave in Washington, D.C.
“These were peaceful people, these were great people,” Trump said in his interview conducted by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
Trump similarly defended white supremacists who had attacked counterprotesters and killed one anti-racist activist at a far right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. At that time, Trump downplayed the violence of the far right protesters, and said there were “very fine people on both sides” who took part in demonstrations.
In his interview on Sunday, Trump exaggerated the size of the crowd that had attacked the Capitol building on his behalf that day, in order to disrupt Congress’s certification of the Electoral College results.
“The crowd was unbelievable and I mentioned the word ‘love,’ the love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said, claiming that there were “over a million people” who had taken part in the breach of the building.
Estimates of the actual crowd size vary, but they were far fewer than a million. One expert on crowd size estimates said that no more than 10,000 individuals could have taken part.
Even though the former president claimed that there was a lot of “spirit and faith and love” on the part of his supporters, Trump appeared to acknowledge during the interview that there was some violence that took place on January 6 — but he falsely blamed Democratic leaders, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California), for what occurred.
“They are the ones that were responsible,” Trump insisted.
On the day that his mob of loyalists attacked the Capitol building, Trump vastly downplayed the severity of their actions, telling them he loved them, and waiting several hours until after they breached the building before telling them to go home.
Trump’s Sunday interview on Fox News occurred just hours before he gave a speech in Dallas, Texas, for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). During his speech, Trump continued to baselessly claim that election fraud had led to the January 6 attack.
“There’s so much evidence [of election fraud]. There’s bad things going on in this country,” Trump said, failing to provide evidence.
To date, all of Trump and his allies’ claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential race have not been substantiated.
Trump also told the CPAC crowd that he judges the authenticity of polls by whether the results are to his liking.
“If it’s bad, I say it’s fake,” Trump admitted of his feelings on polls that show he’s not liked by voters. “If it’s good, I say, that’s the most accurate poll perhaps ever.”
Trump also suggested that he might not accept the results of a CPAC straw poll for the 2024 Republican nomination for president unless it showed him as the clear frontrunner. As it turned out, the straw poll in question showed him with 70 percent support from attendees at the convention who took part, and second-place winner Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida receiving 21 percent.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 500 new monthly donors in the next 10 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy