Former President has admitted he wanted to march in the January 6 Capitol riot with his supporters – but was stopped by his security detail.
‘Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,’ Trump told the in a Wednesday afternoon interview from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump added that he did not regret urging his fans to go to Washington, DC, through tweeting that it would ‘be wild!’ The ex-president also insisted, ‘I said peaceful and patriotic’, at the Ellipse rally before his supporters stormed the Capitol, notably omitting his other remarks that day.
He again praised his backers when pressed on other events of the violent and deadly day.
‘The crowd was far bigger than I even thought. I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to. I don’t know what that means, but you see very few pictures,’ Trump said in the interview published on Thursday. ‘They don’t want to show pictures, the fake news doesn’t want to show pictures. But this was a tremendous crowd.’
Regarding the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, Trump said its members have not contacted him and said he does not know what he would do if they reach out.
‘It depends what the request is,’ Trump said.
He said he does not know what the committee asked his eldest daughter on Tuesday. Nevertheless, he called it ‘shame and harassment’ of his daughter, who served as a senior White House adviser in his administration.
Trump refused to say if he would testify before the committee, as Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner already has. He denied using burner phones that day, removing call logs and said he did not recall ‘getting very many’ calls that day.
He also defended his silence during the insurrection by blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others for not stopping the assault.
‘I thought it was a shame, and I kept asking why isn’t she doing something about it? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of DC also. The mayor of DC and Nancy Pelosi are in charge,’ Trump said
‘I hated seeing it. I hated seeing it. And I said, “It’s got to be taken care of,” and I assumed they were taking care of it.’
.
For more stories like this, .
