Trump once condemned the Jan. 6 rioters. Now he’s become one of their biggest supporters apnews
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“They were there proud, they were there with love in their heart. ... And it was a beautiful day,” Trump said at a recent CNN town hall. When asked if he had any regrets about his actions that day, Trump
voiced no remorse and instead seemed most concerned about the lack of attention paid to his crowd size.
“Jan. 6: It was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to,” he said.
Trump was always reluctant to condemn the actions of supporters spurred by his lies of a stolen election. As the violence unfolded, Trump ignored the desperate pleas of aides and allies to denounce the rioters and ask them to stand down. And when he did speak out, hours later, his response was tepid: He said he loved the rioters and shared their pain.
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That March, in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham, Trump
claimed the rioters had posed “zero threat” to the lawmakers who had assembled in the Capitol to certify the Electoral College vote — even though the
mob tried to breach the House chamber.
“Look, they went in — they shouldn’t have done it. Some of them went in, and
they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know, they had a great relationship,” he said.
In fact, many of the protesters violently clashed with police as they stormed the building, smashing windows and ramming through doors. Some brandished weapons; others wore tactical gear. Dozens of officers were severely
injured.
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Trump called Babbitt “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman” in an
interview with Fox News and described his supporters that day in glowing terms, claiming that there had been a “love fest between the Capitol police and the people that walked down to the Capitol.”
“They were peaceful people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable,” he said. “And I mentioned the word ‘love.’ The love — the love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
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“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” he told the crowd. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.” At that point, more than 670 people had been convicted of crimes related to the attack, including some found guilty of seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers.
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An Associated Press
review of social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records found that the mob was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including GOP officials, donors and far-right militants.
But that hasn’t stopped Trump from
falsely claiming that others were responsible for the attack, including antifa and Black Lives Matter. Last weekend on his social media site, Trump amplified messages claiming that Jan. 6 had been a “staged riot” orchestrated by the government.